[sword-devel] So how about that diatheke thing...?

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Chris Little wrote:

> I'll try to reply more fully later since I'm busy studying for a test,
> but some general points follow:
>
> diatheke needs to remain a general purpose tool, for the most part.
> Addition of support for basic Sword features is fine. Special purpose
> features for a single application are not.

Thanks, Chris, for your time and efforts! I have to say I completely
agree. I want to see diatheke as a general purpose tool, not as
(only) the backend of my program.

I reviewed my previous posts. I'm studying diatheke and sword and
understand more and more. For example, I now know that corediatheke.cpp
can be used by other programs than diatheke/cli. Therefore exit() in
corediatheke is a bad idea. Still returning an exit status is a common
feature and very useful or even a "best practise" for any command line
program. Making doquery() to return a status could be useful for any
program using it and would not break source compatibility.

The only really intrusive feature was "more-machine-readable output". I
bet that is on your "would not accept" list.

The rest were, at least in my opinion, more or less about general
quality of diatheke. If someone disagrees, I would like to hear
justifications. I hope we all could learn more and make diatheke/sword
better. I also hope that writing the man page for diatheke is a proof of
my intention to make diatheke useful for anyone, not just for me.

  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)