From eeb6e4588754dd9dc1468179bfa8daef059abc44 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Lance Edgar Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2025 09:01:08 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] Add RattailV2WhatIsRattail --- RattailV2WhatIsRattail.md | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+) create mode 100644 RattailV2WhatIsRattail.md diff --git a/RattailV2WhatIsRattail.md b/RattailV2WhatIsRattail.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..428a3a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/RattailV2WhatIsRattail.md @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +# What Is Rattail? + +Good question maybe. First of all you may find [[RattailHistory|RattailV2RattailHistory]] interesting for background's sake. + +Rattail is a collection of software projects born out of the "real world" of retail. At its core, rattail intends to be a framework which provides useful things - at whichever layer they're needed - to applications built within and for a retail-type environment. So, before it intends to be any sort of application whatsoever, it intends to be a framework. (In fact there are not yet any "official" rattail applications per se, though some custom/in-house apps are in production.) + +## Out of the Box + +Since most of rattail's offerings are meant to be leveraged by other apps, rattail itself doesn't provide much to the end user out of the box. There is of course a command line interface to Rattail, but that won't expose much that's useful to ''your'' current situation necessarily. + +However there are a few global commands which accept the `--gui` option and could be deemed useful; see [[RattailCommands|RattailV2RattailCommands]] for more info. + +## Developer Tools + +Rattail intends to be the retail programmer's Swiss army knife, as well as it can. Some things it tries to provide for consumption by your next application: + + * general utility functions (e.g. barcode tools) + * command line / options framework + * common means of configuration / logging / etc. + * GUI framework customizations + * hardware interfaces + * extensible database schema + +Use of the database schema additionally makes available: + + * authentication / authorization API + * workflow-based API with hooks + +## Planned Applications + +Eventually we'd like to see the following become a reality: + + * web-based back-office system providing most common functionality + * full, redundant point of sale system, administrable via the web back-end