[sword-devel] DLLs, RAD, and Others

[Daniel Blake]

Thanks for the information, Troy.

There is much more than I thought, yippee!!

Good advice!  I plan on it after I get good with VB.

Daniel Blake

> Daniel and Others,
> A few comments... We do, in fact release many things that allow other
> people to use the sword library in tools other than a C++ environment.
> You will find a flat api of the sword engine in bindings/flatapi.cpp.
> The DLLs that have been released in the past export these functions (or
> some previous incarnation of the flatapi concept).  Using this api (if
> they can't use the OO api) we have CORBA bindings, CLX bindings, and
> SWIG bindings which give us everything from Perl to Python.  There also
> is an unmaintained ActiveX component called ActiveDiatheke, if anyone
> wishes to 'own' that project.
>
> Your suggestion to suffix the name of the DLL is valuable.  If we
> actually had any Windows projects using it, I'm sure we would have
> eventually had to do something like this.
>
> Now, my advice: learn a real RAD tool like Borland C++Builder, so when
> Windoze phases out in a year or two, you can use your skills on linux
> with Kylix ;)
>
> -Troy.
>
>
>
> Daniel Blake wrote:
> > 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
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > sword-devel mailing list
> > sword-devel@crosswire.org
> > http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list
> sword-devel@crosswire.org
> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel