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Lance Edgar edited this page 2025-10-06 16:49:41 -05:00

Table of Contents

• Rattail: Software for Retailers
• About the Project
• Demo
• Documentation
• Community

Rattail: Software for Retailers

Rattail is free software (GNU GPL v3), written in Python, designed for retail businesses and similar organizations. Its primary goal is to be as flexible as possible both in configuration and extensibility, in order to allow each organization to do exactly what needs to be done.

About the Project

Rattail is both a RattailCore and a collection of applications which are built on this framework. Or at least it will be...currently everything is still being built. A front-end point of sale GUI application is planned, but currently all development focus is on the framework itself.

Rattail's inception occurred at MaMa Jean's Natural Market in Springfield, MO, but was also greatly influenced by the Co-op community surrounding the IS4C project. Also, Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op in Sacramento, CA, has contributed heavily to its development.

The name "Rattail" is meant to be a play on the word "retail". As a happy coincidence, there is a creature by the same name, hence the logo.

'''Note:''' While the documentation found in this wiki should be ''mostly'' accurate, it nonetheless documents some outdated things as far as Rattail is concerned. New documentation is being developed alongside a completely new version of the framework, and will be released with it.

Demo

There is a live demo of BONE, initially populated by importing IS4C sample data.

Documentation

Documentation is primarily provided by this wiki. If you're anxious to get things running locally, please see:

• RattailBONE/Installation

If you'd like to learn more about things, see:

• RattailCore - Describes the underlying framework.
• RattailBONE - Describes the BONE web application.

There also is some documentation contained in the Rattail source code. It is geared more toward developers and exists online at PyPI.

Some hardware documentation:

• Hardware/Motorola/MC3000
• Hardware/Zebra/QL 320Plus

Community

Depending on your level of interest in Rattail, there are a few ways to engage. Some exist only in the hope that they will be fully utilized sometime in the future, but others are being actively used now.

• MailingLists - monitored
• Trac Sites - monitored, though not used as heavily as I'd like
• Forums - not directly monitored, but hopefully I'll get an email if something is posted...?

If you'd like to fetch the source code, please see the Trac sites.

If nothing else fits then feel free to mailto:lance@edbob.org.

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