This is doc/dionysus, produced by makeinfo version 4.11 from
./doc/dionysus.texi.

This manual is for GNU Dionysus (version 1.0.0, 22 Sept. 2009), which
prints a friendly greeting (and serves as an example GNU package).

   Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

     Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
     document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
     Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software
     Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts,
     and with no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license is included
     in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

1 What is dionysus?
*******************

What is Dionysus?

     Dionysus is a local machine search engine for universal constants
     and parameters of scientific and engineering relevance. If you
     develop a code and need any kind of well known constant you do not
     need to hard code them anymore. Just use Dionysus and it will do
     the job for you.

     Dionysus is also useful if you need to know some well known
     constant but you do not have an Internet connection or you do not
     want to access to hundreds web pages to a simple value.

     Dionysus has been developed as most carefully as possible and the
     author expects the package to be reliable for the plenty of values
     already included there.

     Anytime you need a value, do not hard code it. Just ask Dionysus
     and it will give you the right answer. It is high consuming to
     look for parameters values, especially because those values are
     usually scattered among papers and websites, some of them being
     very old and/or impossible to find anymore.

     Dionysus comes with a very good database of scientific and
     engineering values that you can use easily. You can even check the
     references for those values. Furthermore, it is very easy to add
     new values to this DataBase if you want.


2 INSTALL
*********

INSTALL

     Very simple: > cd src > sudo make

3 How it works
**************

How it works

     It is very simple to use it. Once Dionysus is installed, it works
     simply like that: > dionysus_query databases/universal.ddb
     "constant name" "what you ask about that constant" where "constant
     name" is the name of the constant you are querying about, and
     "what you ask about that constant" is exactly what it means. For
     example, let us say you are looking for the value of the
     elementary charge, just type: > dionysus_query
     databases/universal.ddb elementary_charge value

     If you want to know a description of the elementary charge then
     type: > dionysus_query databases/universal.ddb elementary_charge
     description

     If you want to know a link that describe that value in more words
     type: > dionysus_query databases/universal.ddb elementary_charge
     link

     If you wanr to know the reference where the value has been taken
     just type: > dionysus_query databses/universal.ddb
     elementary_charge reference


4 Adding new values to Dionysus
*******************************

     How to add a new value to a dionysus DB? It's very easy. First of
     all you can choose if you want to add a value to an existing DB or
     if you want to create a new DB. I strongly recommend to use the
     "ddb" extension for a dionysus DB for coherence. In any case a
     dionysus DB is simply a ASCII file, nothing more nothing less. To
     add a new value you must follow the dionysus syntax for that
     purpose. No worries, the syntax is extremely easy and flexible.

     First of all, every line that starts with a "#" symbol is a
     comment and will be completely ignored by the parser.

     To define a new constant you must follow this syntax: - Any
     definition starts by the word "def" - Any property related to the
     constant is done as follow:   property="blah blah" - Any
     definition ends by the word "end"

     For example, let us say we want to define the constant with the
     name "sellier_constant", the value "512", the units "Kb" and the
     link "www.gnu.org/software/archimedes". This is done by the
     following lines: def  name="sellier_constant"  value="512"
     units="Kb"  link="www.gnu.org/software/archimedes" end


5 EXAMPLES
**********

EXAMPLES

6 TESTS (for C codes)
*********************

TESTS (for C codes)

7 Contacts
**********

CONTACTS

   For any information please contact me, the author of Dionysus, at
the following address:

   jeanmichel.sellier AT gmail DOT com

