/** \mainpage The SENF Socket Library

    The Socket library provides a high level and object oriented
    abstraction of the BSD socket API. The abstraction is based on
    several concepts:

    \li The basic visible interface is a handle object
	(senf::FileHandle and it's derived classes)
    \li The socket interface relies on a policy framework to configure
	it's functionality
    \li The rest of the socket API is accessible using a classic
	inheritance hierarchy of protocol classes

    The handle/body architecture provides automatic reference counted
    management of socket instances, the policy framework provides
    highly efficient access to the most important socket functions
    (like reading and writing) and the inheritance hierarchy provides
    convenient access to the multitude of special and protocol
    dependent options.

    \see \ref usage \n
         \ref extend \n
         \ref implementation
 */

/** \page usage Using the Socket Library

    \section socket_handle The socket handle

    Whenever you use the socket library, what you will be dealing with
    are senf::FileHandle derived instances. The socket library relies
    on reference counting to automatically manage the underlying
    socket representation. This frees you of having to manage the
    socket lifetime explicitly.
    
    \attention It is very important, to (almost) always pass the socket
    handle <em>by value</em>. The socket handle is a very lightweight
    class and designed to be used like an ordinary built-in type. This
    is very important in combination with the policy interface.

    \section policy_framework The policy framework

    The policy framework conceptually implements a list of parallel
    inheritance hierarchies each covering a specific interface aspect
    of the socket handle. The socket handle itself only provides
    minimal functionality. All further functionality is relayed to a
    policy class, or more precisely, to a group of policy classes, one
    for each policy axis. The policy axis are
    
    <dl>
    <dt><em>addressingPolicy</em></dt>
    <dd>configures, whether a socket is
    addressable and if so, configures the address type</dd>
    
    <dt><em>framingPolicy</em></dt>
    <dd>configures the type of framing the socket provides: either no
    framing providing a simple i/o stream or packet framing</dd>
    
    <dt><em>communicationPolicy</em></dt>
    <dd>configures,if and how the communication partner is
    selected</dd> 
    
    <dt><em>readPolicy</em></dt>
    <dd>configures the readability of the socket</dd>
    
    <dt><em>writePolicy</em></dt>
    <dd>configures the writability of the socket</dd>
    
    <dt><em>bufferingPolicy</em></dt>
    <dd>configures, if and how buffering is configured for a socket</dd>
    </dl>

 */

/** \page extend Extending the Library
 */

/** \page implementation Implementation notes

    \image html "../../SocketLibrary-classes.png" Class hierarchy
 */



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