[sword-devel] Release Wrapup

[Greg Hellings]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 1:52 PM, Matt Zabojnik <mattzab at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't mean to derail this in any way. I've previously only had
> experience with HTML/PHP/SQL, and I'm now learning Python (in order to
> develop a SWORD-related Android app)
>
> Would it be beneficial to port the whole project to Python? That seems to
> be a widely known and easy to learn language.
> Forgive my ignorance if this question is completely unreasonable. I've
> previously only ventured into hack-together type of workaround stuff when
> it comes to computers, rather than true programming. (Learning RegEx has
> been an amazing eye-opening experience in module making)
>

Not likely. There is already an existing Java port, and there is little
interest in maintaining more than the one official port. The language is
not a significant barrier to improvement, adoption, or advancement. In
fact, being written in decently portable C and C++ is one of the best
technical merits of the engine. It allows us to offer bindings to Perl (for
scripting) and Python (for BPBible and the like), and wrappers into
Objective-C (for our Mac and iPhone apps), and into the JNI interface (for
at least one Android app). Maintaining a pure-Java port gives access to
other environments (Java Swing UI, web, and native Android) and could allow
easy access to others as well (e.g. Jython, JRuby, JavaScript).

If you were going to start a whole new port into a language like Python you
would begin to open the door to format shifting the modules, and a whole
host of other things that would be incompatible with the current project.
Not many Python developers are going to happily attack the binary flat
format that a Sword module currently lives in. They're going to want to use
something else, most likely. You're going to lose out on around two decades
of support, features, bug fixes, and small tweaks and have to start again
to re-gain the code maturity that the engine already has. And there's far
more you'd lose out on.

No, a new port is not likely to happen within the community. Not to say it
couldn't happen outside of the community. But you're not likely to get core
developer support for abandoning the current library and shifting to a new
port into a language like Python. The closest you'll probably get is forks,
like the existing Sword++ fork. Or people who have wrapped Sword in order
to format shift content, e.g. into a SQL database or JSON or such, for use
in a new application.

--Greg


> I know BPBible was written mostly in Python. If I get good enough at
> Python and have the time I may fork and develop that front-end where I can.
> I'm still pretty green though to say the least.
>
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 11:06 AM, David Haslam <dfhmch at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Are we any closer to a release of SWORD v1.8 ?
>>
>> cf. Troy started this thread last October.
>>
>> As someone without any experience of C++ programming, I sometimes wonder
>> how
>> many C++ programmers are still active in CrossWire. It seems far, far
>> fewer
>> than when I first linked up with CrossWire in 2008.
>>
>> cf. Last month, Karl noted some anniversaries that are passing us by yet
>> again....
>>
>> Which known bugs in the engine will be fixed in v1.8 ?
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context: http://sword-dev.350566.n4.nab
>> ble.com/Release-Wrapup-tp4656501p4656698.html
>> Sent from the SWORD Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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>
>
>
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