[sword-devel] Introduction

[Scott and Roxanne Munns]

Hello everyone,
 
My name is Scott Munns.  My family (wife Roxanne, son Aaron, daughter
Rebekah, and brand-new kitty Harmony) lives in Onalaska, Wisconsin, USA.  I
recently started using Sword, starting with BibleTime.  I was very happy
with many aspects of the software!  I have some ideas for future
improvements, but I will wait to share those until I know the system better
- maybe they already exist and I don't know how to access them yet!
 
I am interested in helping out on development tasks, from an Ubuntu Gnome
Linux laptop (I don't have M$ development tools at home).  For now, I am
guessing that I will want to focus on Sword development as opposed to
BibleTime or GnomeSword, but that could change.  I've been running Linux for
10 years, some as a sysadmin, and I've been programming full-time in C++ at
work for about 5 years now.  Mostly control algorithms for embedded machine
controllers, not PC development.  Some work with touchscreen displays,
Unicode, etc.  I will have some learning curve, since my prior coding did
not use std::, instead relying on similar constructs within the development
tool Rhapsody.  Perhaps I could help with some janitorial tasks, etc. to get
familiar with the code base before plunging ahead with bigger things??
 
I started by building Sword 1.5.8 (no ICU or CLucene support) and BibleTime
1.6beta3 (installed pieces of KDE necessary to build properly).  These ran
well together, and that is where I learned how great the software can be!  I
am so excited to be able to hover over words and get lexicon definitions
right away!  Maybe I am easy to please...
 
Next, feeling more adventurous, I grabbed the latest BibleTime from
anonymous CVS and attempted to build it against Sword 1.5.8.  This was also
successful!
 
Then, feeling rather confident, I moved toward the real bleeding edge by
downloading the latest source for Sword from svn and trying to get a good
build.  Already I have bumped into some issues and have some questions:
 
 - I tried downloading CLucene 0.9.15 and ICU 3.4.1.  They built fine, but I
ran into issues with both packages when compiling the latest Sword with
those features enabled.  CLucene had the issue with
"lib/CLucene/clucene-config.h" instead of "include/CLucene/clucene-config.h"
mentioned in earlier e-mails, and I also got a compile error when using ICU
3.4.1 (I'm assuming no ICU 3.6 support yet, since it was only released Sept.
1).  I guess my question is, how often is compatibility with CLucene and ICU
checked, and how important is it?
 
 - Latest BibleTime won't compile with latest Sword due to API breakage
between 1.5.8 and 1.5.9.  What is your policy (or rule of thumb) for
deprecating/obsoleting APIs?  I guess I was surprised that APIs changed
enough between minor revisions that applications wouldn't build.  Or did I
make a mistake somewhere?  Is someone working on updating BibleTime to work
with Sword 1.5.9?
 
 - Any ideas on where I could help out?
 
Thanks for any assistance you can lend, and blessings to you all!
Scott

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