<h2>About the OPeNDAP DAP2 C++ Library Package</h2>

<p>This package contains the OPeNDAP C++ implementation of the Data
Access Protocol version 2 (DAP2) with some extensions that will be
part of DAP3. Documentation for this software can be found on the
OPeNDAP home page at <tt>http://www.opendap.org/</tt>. The NASA/ESE
RFC which describes DAP2, implemented by the library, can be found at
<tt>http://www.esdswg.org/spg/rfc/ese-rfc-004</tt>.</p>

<p>The DAP2 is used to provide a uniform way of accessing a variety of
different types of data across the Internet. It was originally part of
the DODS and then NVODS projects. The focus of those projects was
access to Earth-Science data, so much of the software developed using
the DAP2 to date has centered on that discipline. However, the DAP2
data model is very general (and similar to a modern structured
programming language) so it can be applied to a wide variety of
fields.</p>

<p>This package is required for many of the other Mac OS/X packages
  OPeNDAP has written. By default it will use <tt>/usr</tt> as the
  base directory for installation. If you change the default
  installation prefix, be sure to modify the PATH environment variable
  accordingly.</p>