Lots of documentation, an example program, and also some visibility cleanup.

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/java/com/xagasoft/gats/GatsString.java b/java/com/xagasoft/gats/GatsString.java
index e512ade..e119aec 100644
--- a/java/com/xagasoft/gats/GatsString.java
+++ b/java/com/xagasoft/gats/GatsString.java
@@ -3,6 +3,17 @@ package com.xagasoft.gats;
 import java.io.InputStream;
 import java.io.OutputStream;
 
+/**
+ * Represents a Gats string, that is, a string of 8-bit bytes.  Unlike the
+ * standard Java string, a Gats string is a string of 8-bit bytes, not 16-bit
+ * UCS characters.  If you want to transmit textual data, we highly recommend
+ * encoding it into UTF-8.  You can do this by constructing a GatsString from
+ * a java string thusly:  new GatsString( myStr.getBytes("UTF8") )
+ * <p>
+ * If you pass a java string into a GatsString instead of an array of bytes it
+ * will simply call the getBytes function.  This may not be what you want in
+ * many cases, but will work great for simple cases.
+ */
 public class GatsString extends GatsObject
 {
         private byte[] aValue = null;
@@ -46,14 +57,14 @@ public class GatsString extends GatsObject
                 return GatsObject.STRING;
         }
 
-        public void read( InputStream is, char cType ) throws java.io.IOException
+        void read( InputStream is, char cType ) throws java.io.IOException
         {
                 long lSize = GatsInteger.readPackedInt( is );
                 aValue = new byte[(int)lSize];
                 is.read( aValue );
         }
 
-        public void write( OutputStream os ) throws java.io.IOException
+        void write( OutputStream os ) throws java.io.IOException
         {
                 os.write( (int)'s' );
                 if( aValue == null )