[sword-devel] sword development questions and suggestions

[Martin Gruner]

1. InstallMgr

Some time ago it was mentioned that the backend functionality of the 
InstallMgr would be integrated in the sword library to ease the creation of 
frontend-specific Installation Tools. How is the status of that integration? 
Is it still wanted? If so, when could we expect this to be done?

I'm asking because the BibleTime team plans to create such an Installation 
Tool for KDE/QT _really soon_. We would be happy to use the backend 
functionality in sword, but we can do without as well. So please let us know 
your plans. If nobody replies I'll assume the plans died, and we'll implement 
our own solution, though I'd prefer collaboration on this particular topic.

2. CVS

May I ask for the cvs split to be executed? It really makes a lot of sense to 
slit up the main repository into parts that form logical units, such as lib 
(including examples), apps, tools etc. The main "sword" cvs module should be 
as slim as possible while keeping the stuff necessary for developing and 
building the main sword lib, for not all have that fast internet connections.

3. ICU

We need to think about ICU integration in sword. For reasons I already 
explained here (and can explain again if you want me to) I refuse make 
BibleTime dependant on ICU as long as it is not the standard ICU distribution 
(which it isn't) or as long as it is integrated in sword directly.

Why should we integrate it? It makes the whole installation process far more 
easy for users and frontend developers. My proposal: 
-Integrate the whole (patched) ICU source and data tree in sword and make it 
permanently dependant on ICU. 
-Then we could have switches to "configure", which turn off the inclusion of 
ICU datafiles (except dummy files) in the released packages. Thereby the 
installed binary will probably stay small enough for handheld devices, while 
offering a consistent API. 
-If you also wish to exclude the ICU sources, we will need to introduce 
wrapper classes which make compiling possible for frontends no matter if ICU 
is included or not.

Thanks for your consideration and replies.

Martin