From 9ec8ce346d985b97f401dfc5f9a8c6f03b2d6fc1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?Niels=20M=C3=B6ller?= <nisse@lysator.liu.se>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 16:43:26 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Copied introduction from the manual.
Rev: src/nettle/README:1.2
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README | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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diff --git a/README b/README
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+What is Nettle? A quote from the introduction in the Nettle Manual:
+
+ Nettle is a cryptographic library that is designed to fit easily in more
+ or less any context: In crypto toolkits for object-oriented languages
+ (C++, Python, Pike, ...), in applications like LSH or GNUPG, or even in
+ kernel space. In most contexts, you need more than the basic
+ cryptographic algorithms, you also need some way to keep track of available
+ algorithms, their properties and variants. You often have some algorithm
+ selection process, often dictated by a protocol you want to implement.
+
+ And as the requirements of applications differ on subtle and not so
+ subtle ways, an API that fits one application well can be a pain to use
+ in a different context. And that is why there are so many different
+ cryptographic libraries around.
+
+ Nettle tries to avoid this problem by doing one thing, the low-level
+ crypto stuff, and providing a @emph{simple} but general interface to it.
+ In particular, Nettle doesn't do algorithm selection. It doesn't do
+ memory allocation. It doesn't do any I/O.
+
+ The idea is that one can build several application and context specific
+ interfaces on top of Nettle, and share the code, testcases, banchmarks,
+ documentation, etc. For this first version, the only application using
+ Nettle is LSH, and it uses an object-oriented abstraction on top of the
+ library.
+
+Build nettle with the usual ./configure && make && make check && make
+install. Read the manual. Mail me if you have any questions or
+suggestions.
+
+Happy hacking,
+/Niels Möller <nisse@lysator.liu.se>
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