[sword-devel] roadmap for Windows frontend(?)

[Don A. Elbourne Jr.]

Chris,

I'm assuming you know my vote about moving to Gecko rendering, but I'll
voice it anyway. I'm all for it. :) Since module creation and CSS are the
only things I'm really qualified to help with, I should not comment much
further.

by grace alone,

Don A. Elbourne Jr.
http://elbourne.org



----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Little" <chrislit@crosswire.org>
To: <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 4:26 PM
Subject: [sword-devel] roadmap for Windows frontend(?)


> I would be interested in getting a feel for where people believe we should
> head with Windows frontend development (after 1.5.6).  I'm really only
> interested in realistic and feasible near-term objectives, especially from
> those people who are likely to actually put work into the project.  The
> reason I ask is because I would like to know where I should devote my
> time.
>
> As far as I can see, there are four roads we can take with BibleCS at the
> moment:
>
> 1. Keep doing the same as we've been doing.
>
> 2. Move to Gecko rendering with the same BibleCS codebase.
>
> 3. Develop the desktop-based prototype to match the features of the
> current BibleCS codebase (and presumably add Gecko rendering).
>
> 4. Dump BibleCS development to concentrate on the wxWindows-based
> frontend.
>
>
>
> -----
>
> My own hopes/feelings/vision....
>
> I'm somewhat torn between options 2 and 3.  I feel as if it is really time
> to move past RTF (ruling out option 1) and I feel that wxWindows, while a
> very nice way to support multiple platforms, cannot serve the
> Windows-using community as well as a Windows-specific API would (ruling
> out option 4).  (wxWindows, for example, could not manage the
> desktop-interface of the prototype very easily, to my knowledge.)
>
> Personally, I wish we could dump BibleCS and do an MFC front-end in VC++
> since that would eliminate a lot of the nonsense we put up with, having to
> essentially port 3rd party libraries from VC++ to Borland, but I don't
> think there are enough like-minded developers to support moving
> development to VC++.
>
> So I guess my vote, out of the options I listed, would be to do option 2
> for the next release (get Gecko rendering done) then use that to really
> get started on option 3: BibleCS 2.0.
>
> Some of the big advantages of finally moving to HTML rendering will be
> ability to produce interlinear texts that actually stack and to use CSS
> for user-customization.  With CSS, we could even toggle things like
> Strong's numbers or footnotes by a change to the CSS instead of running
> through our filters.
>
> Thoughts/comments?
>
> --Chris
>
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