The purpose of software engineering 
is to manage complexity, not to create it.
Bill Catambay

PTypes (C++ Portable Types Library) is a simple alternative to the STL that includes multithreading and networking. It defines dynamic strings, variants, character sets, lists and other basic data types along with threads, synchronization objects, IP sockets and named pipes. PTypes also offers message queues as an alternative method of thread synchronization. Its main `target audience' is developers of complex network daemons, robots or non-visual client/server applications of any kind.

PTypes defines simple and intuitive interfaces, and unlike the STL, it is free of C++ templates. PTypes is portable across many modern operating systems (currently FreeBSD, Linux, SunOS, Mac OS X and Windows). All platform-dependent issues are hidden inside. A simple web server called wshare is included in the package to demonstrate the full power of PTypes.

And finally, PTypes is open and free.

• Online documentation
  The documentation is available both on-line and off-line, i.e. as a part of the downloadable package. You may want to take a look at the Introduction first.

• License
  PTypes is a free library and is covered by a simple license known as "zlib/libpng License". It grants full freedom to use and redistribute the library except that you can not change its name and/or the copyright notice and redistribute it as your own work.

• Download PTypes 1.7.1: [primary site]  [mirror at sourceforge.net]
  Although the text files in this package are in Unix format, they can be displayed and edited in most non-Unix development environments. No binaries are currently available.

• Subscribe to new releases of PTypes
  Become a FreshMeat.net user and subscribe to the future announcements about PTypes. (FreshMeat itself is a huge repository of open-source software.)

• PTypes discussion forum and bug tracking
  Post your questions, comments, feature requests and bug reports through PTypes project management page at SourceForge.Net.
  

The original location of this library is http://www.melikyan.com/ptypes/ and http://ptypes.sourceforge.net/