[sword-devel] Python bindings for libsword with SIP

[Peter von Kaehne]

Jonathan Morgan wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Troy Melhase <troy.melhase at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> We probably could replace SWIG with SIP, but it is unlikely we would
>>> do it soon just because BPBible works and works now with what is
>>> there.  The changes you describe would be far more likely to benefit
>>> the Python programmer working with the SWORD API directly than they
>>> would be to benefit us, and so I'm not keen on making changes to
>>> working code as a priority.
>> I'm sorry for not being more clear.  My intention is not to replace
>> anything, I was asking for help with testing and for confirmation that
>> other folks can get this to compile.  And this couldn't replace the
>> SWIG bindings, not even close, because this works for Python only, not
>> Perl, Ruby, TCL, Scheme, etc.
> 
> I was talking solely about BPBible, not about SWORD generally.  If SIP
> turned out to be better then we would certainly think about using it.
> As for SWIG support, while there has certainly been interest from a
> number of other people in SWIG bindings, I am not sure that there are
> too many projects (major or minor) that use the SWIG bindings, and I
> think there are even fewer that are still active now (which of course
> doesn't mean we should drop support for it).

2 sets of SWIG bindings are actively used by projects we maintain here
or know off well.

The java bindings are an important part of swordweb
The python bindings are used by BpBible and by Rapier.

Rapier is a Maemo application. My feeling is that the SIP bindings might
come useful for latter in the future for 2 reasons:

SIP is supposedly designed specifically for use with QT (and Maemo 5.0
is based on QT, while previous versions were on gtk). Not sure how
important that might be.

But more relevant - any space saving would be useful on a mobile
platform. The N900 while having 32GB space overall allows only extremely
limited space to the application side of things.

I think the developer of rapier is occasionally on IRC #sword and runs
by the handle melmoth (but I am not too sure).

And then there are the SWIG perl and PHP bindings which I could see
someone simply using for their own website project and we would never know.

Peter