Context Toolkit User's Guide

This document is a user's guide for the Context Toolkit. The main web page for the Context Toolkit is: http://contexttoolkit.sourceforge.net. It is assumed that you are somewhat familiar with the ideas behind the Context Toolkit. If that is not the case, please look ove the publications on the toolkit. This will provide a high level of understanding on what we are trying to do.

Basically, the Context Toolkit is a platform that is aimed at simplifying the process of building context-aware applications. It is based on the concept of widgets, that allow you to separate the details of how things are done from actually doing them. Applying this to context, we have context widgets that allow us to separate the details of sensing context from actually using the context. The Context Toolkit is a platform that supports the use of context widgets to enable designers to rapidly prototype context-aware applications.

Along with context widgets, we provide context servers, that aggregate context about particular entities: people, places, and objects; context interpreters, that interpret context into other forms of context; and finally context enactors, that serve as application units that acquire and take actions based upon context. Widgets, servers, interpreteters and enactors are allowed to run on different computers, communicating over a network. Support for distributed communications is provided in the toolkit. The toolkit, while designed in Java, is aimed to be used in combination with multiple programming languages on multiple computing platforms.

The user's guide has 3 parts: an installation guide, a tutorial, and source code javadoc documentation.

If you are going to be using the Context Toolkit, be sure to check out our sourceforge development and usage forums.


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Last Modified: December 23, 2003
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