Add high-level documentation

1 files changed, 74 insertions, 13 deletions

diff --git a/doc/c/overview.rst b/doc/c/overview.rst
index 2b204155..296c9042 100644
--- a/doc/c/overview.rst
+++ b/doc/c/overview.rst
@@ -1,22 +1,83 @@
-########
 Overview
-########
+========
 
 .. default-domain:: c
 .. highlight:: c
 
-The API revolves around two main types: the :doc:`api/serd_reader`,
-which reads text and fires callbacks,
-and the :doc:`api/serd_writer`,
-which writes text when driven by corresponding functions.
-Both work in a streaming fashion but still support pretty-printing,
-so the pair can be used to pretty-print, translate,
-or otherwise process arbitrarily large documents very quickly.
-The context of a stream is tracked by the :doc:`api/serd_env`,
-which stores the current base URI and set of namespace prefixes.
-
-The complete API is declared in ``serd.h``:
+The serd API is declared in ``serd.h``:
 
 .. code-block:: c
 
    #include <serd/serd.h>
+
+An instance of serd is represented by a :doc:`api/serd_world`,
+which manages "global" facilities like memory allocation and logging.
+The rest of the API can be broadly grouped into four categories:
+
+Data
+   A :doc:`api/serd_node` is the basic building block of data,
+   3 or 4 nodes together make a :doc:`api/serd_statement`.
+   All data is expressed in statements.
+
+Streams
+   Components communicate by sending and receiving streams of data.
+   Data is streamed via :doc:`api/serd_sink`,
+   which is an abstract interface that receives :doc:`api/serd_event`.
+   The fundamental event is a statement event,
+   but there are a few additional event types that describe context which is useful for things like pretty-printing.
+
+   Some components both send and receive data,
+   which allow them to be inserted in a `pipeline` to process the data as it streams through.
+   For example,
+   a :doc:`api/serd_canon` converts literals to canonical form,
+   and a :doc:`api/serd_filter` filters statements that match (or do not match) some pattern.
+
+   An event stream describes changes to data and its context,
+   but does not store the context.
+   For that, an associated :doc:`api/serd_env` is maintained.
+   This stores the active base URI and namespace prefixes which can,
+   for example,
+   be used to write output with the same abbreviations used in the source.
+
+Reading and Writing
+   Reading and writing data is performed using a :doc:`api/serd_reader`,
+   which reads text and emits data to a sink,
+   and a :doc:`api/serd_writer`,
+   which is a sink that writes the incoming data as text.
+   Both work in a streaming fashion so that large documents can be pretty-printed,
+   translated,
+   or otherwise processed quickly using only a small amount of memory.
+
+Storage
+   A set of statements can be stored in memory as a :doc:`api/serd_model`.
+   This supports quickly searching and scanning statements,
+   provided an appropriate index is enabled.
+
+   Data can be loaded into a model via an :doc:`api/serd_inserter`,
+   which is a sink that inserts incoming statements into a model.
+   Data in a model can be written out by calling :func:`serd_describe_range` on the desired range of statements.
+
+The sink interface acts as a generic connection which can be used to build custom data processing pipelines.
+For example,
+a simple pipeline to read a document, filter out some statements, and write the result to a new file,
+would look something like:
+
+.. image:: ../_static/writer_pipeline.svg
+
+Here, dotted arrows represent event streams,
+and solid arrows represent explicit use of a component.
+In other words, dotted arrows represent connections via the abstract :doc:`api/serd_sink` interface.
+In this case both reader and writer are using the same environment,
+so the output document will have the same abbreviations as the input.
+It is also possible to use different environments,
+for example to set additional namespace prefixes to further abbreviate the document.
+
+Similarly, a document could be loaded into a model with canonical literals using a pipeline like:
+
+.. image:: ../_static/model_pipeline.svg
+
+Many other useful pipelines can be built using the components in serd,
+and applications can implement custom ones to add additional functionality.
+
+The following documentation gives a more detailed bottom-up introduction to the API,
+with links to the complete reference where further detail can be found.