[sword-devel] the release

[Daniel Blake]

Sorry it took so long for me to reply but I've been busy and I wanted to
double-check my facts before I wrote back.

There is, in fact, a DLL that was created. It is version 1.5.4a . I was sure
that I had downloaded one from the site before so I searched my server and
found this file: sworddll-1.5.4a.zip

As to the concern of not maintaining backwards compatibility I would suggest
a naming scheme for the DLL that had the version in the name
"sword154a.dll", as an example. This way anyone writing a program would
specify which DLL their program was written for. With this naming
convention, having multiple DLLs on the same machine wouldn't cause any
problems of compatibility and it wouldn't be much of a burden to people's
storage space either.

I want to preface my next thought with saying I am not trying to start a
flame or sound know it all-ish. Keeping this in mind, I want to remind the
people of this list what The Sword Projects MAIN purpose is: Here is the
quote from the website.

The SWORD Project is the CrossWire Bible Society's free Bible software
project. Its purpose is to create cross-platform open-source tools, covered
by the GNU General Public License, that allow programmers and Bible
societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily. Its secondary
purpose is to amass a library of Bibles and other Scripture-related texts
that can be used by all SWORD Project-based software.

Our Statement of Purpose says that our first purpose is to create The Sword
Project for quick and easy software development. Couldn't quick and easy be
interpreted as Rapid Application Development (RAD)?  The Statement of
Purpose says our SECONDARY purpose is to amass a library of modules for use
with the Sword Engine.

As someone who is just learning to program my main contribution to this
project is first prayer and second testing and suggestions. It is not my
intention to step on toes or to preach, but if creating RAD Tools is the
main purpose of this project then I don't see how we could stay away from
creating DLLs or OCXs.

I would just ask that we do an inventory of ourselves as a project to see if
we are keeping the balance of what was originally intended.

1) Create the tools.
2) Amass/create the libraries.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long and opinionated post.
Please see that my heart is to see the project go far and not to cause
division.

Daniel Blake


> Since we don't maintain any compatability between library releases, this
> is a bad idea.  If we start releasing sword.dll's, everything will break
> between versions.
>
> Besides which, no Sword DLL exists, it would be a lot of work to create
> & document one that works, etc.
>
> If you or someone else really feels like working on this project, we can
> consider it for inclusion with 1.5.7.
>
> --Chris
> >
> >
> > I suggest that before you release, please make a Sword
> > Dynamic Link Library and distribute it, so that others can
> > use it in VB, VC and Delphi.
> >
> > Paul