[bt-devel] 1.1b1 & general book support

[Martin Gruner]

> > One thing that disturbs me about ICU: it must be present at
> > compile time.
> > Would it be possible to load it at runtime in sword, if it is present?
>
> I don't know if that's possible or not.  What would be the advantage?

I hope it is! Doesn't C++ offer mechanisms for dynamic loading of libraries? 
The benefit would be that users can install sword & bibletime without having 
sword-icu installed. Once they realize it would be helpful for them they 
could just add the package and sword would use it.

I came to this thought whilef thinking about how to handle the icu stuff in 
bibletime. If I don't want to force all users to have it, I'll have to work 
with many #ifdefs, which is really an ugly style of coding, and it could 
become really difficult, because we'd have to use it in many places, and for 
UI components. Therefore I'd suggest thinking about another solution. 

Maybe this is something for sword 2.0, where it could be wise to have a 
plugin-like mechanism allowing users to add components easily. Though I don't 
really understand how that kind of stuff works and if it would be beneficial.

Martin