Author: 
Thomas Leibner <leibner@t-online.de> http://www.leibner-it.de

Purpose:
Accessing unix files (and unix device files) from LabVIEW(tm) for Linux in a Posix conform manner.

"LabVIEW" is a registered trademark of National Instruments (www.ni.com).

Summary:
The necessity for LVL/PosixIO arouse from the development of a scientific experimental setup,
which utilizes 
- Realtime Linux to do hard realtime control on the experiment's hardware and 
- LabVIEW to have a reliable and rapid development suite for a graphical frontend. 

LVL/PosixIO is a set of LabVIEW routines (called VI's) to access these C library's Posix calls:
- open() / close()
- read() / write()
- select(), ioctl()

These calls enable access to the stream oriented data model of Linux. Further developments will
focus on a shared memory approach.

The project was started by the need to communicate between LabVIEW and the NMT-RTLinux variant. 
It also works fine (without recompilation) with the RTAI Realtime Linux variant. 
The provided code (LabVIEW VI's)  were compiled for LabVIEW 5.1 and tested to be working up to Version 6.0.2 
of LabVIEW.

A similar set of interfacing VI's can be found at www.rtai.org, provided by Phil Daly. His set of VI's lacks
support for select() and ioctl() but provide about 80+ routines for data typ conversion between RTLinux and
LabVIEW. As a metapher, Phil's approach is CISC, while my approach is RISC.
As a counterpart to Phil my set if routines use the LabVIEW built-in binary-to-XXX data type 
conversion methods.

While the project was rather a closed shop until now (some older VI were downloadable from my
www.leibner-it.de site), I'd like to go public now, with all source and examples.

License:
Released under GNU LESSER PUBLIC LICENCE (GNU LGPL).

