Data/Favorites version 1.00
===========================

A Favorites structure tracks the disposition of various keys.  A key's
disposition is a measurement of its relative predominance and freshness
when tallied.  This is a good way to infer favorites or other
leadership-oriented facts from a historical data stream.

More specifically, this structure measures how often and when various
keys are triggered by application-defined events.  Those keys that are
mentioned often will accumulate a higher number of tally points.  Those
keys that have been mentioned recently will have newer "freshness"
stamps.  Both of these factors are metered and will affect their
positioning in a ranking of the keys.

At any time, keys can be culled by freshness or by their current ranking,
or both.  With these approaches, dispositions can be weighed over the
whole historical record, rather than providing a simplistic "top events
in the last N events" rolling count.  Thus, highly popular event keys may
remain in the set of favorites for some time, even when the key hasn't
been seen very often recently.  Popular items can be decayed gradually
rather than cut out of a simple census window.

INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

DEPENDENCIES

This module requires only stock modules such as warnings, strict and Carp.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright 1998-2003 by Ed Halley

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.

