[sword-devel] free Windows compiler for SWORD

[Chris Little]

> His views are by no means representative of the 
> majority here.

But his views are representative of the people who have made 90% of the 
module import tools.  If people don't like those views, they can make 
their own tools--then their opinions will matter.  Until then: what we 
have is generally what you're going to get--that is, importers for 
CONFORMING documents of standard formats.  Don't like it?  Make your 
own.  Don't complain to me about some itch that you have to make module 
creation easier beyond that because it's not my itch and I just don't 
care.  I've got plenty to do already.

>     He does make a good point in that it would be MUCH MORE WORK FOR HIM 
> if we had a million people submitting modules.

Bad modules.  I don't mind good modules (which is not to say that it's 
not work and that I don't still get behind on processing them, but at 
least it is time well spent).

>     Don makes a good point that we want to enable people to easily place 
> their content into our software-- and I agree.

My arguments really have nothing to do with who creates the document 
itself, just how well it is encoded electronically.  I'm not going to 
spend any time writing an HTML/RTF/MS Word to Sword module converter. 
These are the kinds of things most regular users would want to write 
content in and they're completely inappropriate tools that generate 
presentational markup with no document structure.  If someone else feels 
like working on it, enjoy.

>     2) take a HARD stance on getting content on crosswire.org.  
> Basically, we don't accept user made contributions (period).

This contrasts with current practice. (the two German commentaries)

>     I also, as a regular linux user, don't take Chris' (a regular 
> windows user, and self-proclaimed windows/microsoft advocate) comments 
> on linux binaries very seriously.

I'm not a Microsoft advocate.  Windows simply does all I need and Linux 
doesn't.  But at least I know how to compile a kernel.  And if you want 
to seriously work on modules, you're going to need to learn to compile 
from CVS since I don't think anyone feels recompiling for you every time 
you discover a bug in the code.  At least I'm not as much of a hardline 
communist as Troy.  He would make you fix the bug yourself.

Seriously, the single greatest problem with Sword is probably the 
inordinate ratio of people crying for new features to the number people 
they expect to implement them.

--Chris