Common:Description=The Linux GPIB Package is a support package for GPIB (IEEE 488) hardware. The${Newline} package contains kernel driver modules, and a C user-space library with${Newline} Guile, Perl, PHP, Python and Tcl bindings. The API of the C library is${Newline} intended to be compatible with National Instrument's GPIB library.${Newline} .${Newline} The General Purpose Instrumentation Bus (GPIB) is a short-range digital${Newline} communications cable standard  connecting electronic test and measurement${Newline} devices to control devices. Developed by HP in 1970 (and then called HP-IB)${Newline} it has been standardized in 1978 by the Institute of Electrical and${Newline} Electronics Engineers as the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for Programmable${Newline} Instrumentation, IEEE-488-1978 (now 488.1).${Newline} .${Newline} IEEE-488 allows up to 15 intelligent devices to share a single bus by${Newline} daisy-chaining, with the slowest device participating in the control and data${Newline} transfer handshakes to determine the speed of the transaction. The maximum${Newline} data rate is about one megabit per second. Paraphrasing the 1989 HP Test &${Newline} Measurement Catalog: HP-IB has a party-line structure wherein all devices on${Newline} the bus are connected in parallel. The 16 signal lines within the passive${Newline} interconnecting HP-IB cable are grouped into three clusters according to${Newline} their functions: Data Bus, Data Byte Transfer.${Newline} .${Newline} To use these packages you have be using a 2.6 kernel, install${Newline} gpib-modules-source, compile a gpib-modules-KVERS package out of it, install${Newline} that and libgpib0 as well a libgpib-bin. Documentation and headers are${Newline} contained in libgpib0-dev. Language bindings for Python, perl and php are${Newline} available in separate packages as well.
