[sword-devel] Porting to MS .NET framework

Bryant Huang sword-devel@crosswire.org
Tue, 10 Jun 2003 12:41:30 -0700


Hi,

This is in response to the first question that Nguyen Ly posted back in
early May. I haven't been subscribed to the mailing list, nor have I been
checking the list recently, so I didn't see this question earlier.

You asked:
"Anyone thinking of porting the Sword API to MS .NET framework classes ?"

Yes! I in fact tried to do so more than a year ago, back in March/April
2002. I was able to write a functional set of classes that would take
limited queries, like "Mark 1:1" or ranges like "Mark 1:1-5", and retrieve
the passage from raw text modules. I had great difficulty fully
understanding the C++ code so I ended up reverse-engineering a lot of it. I
should've sought help from the mailing list but I was in a sense just doing
it for fun. You can visit my old site at SourceForge at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/swordnet. I soon became busy with my studies
so I couldn't move on any further. I would like to pick up on the project
once more, but with help from others, since I am very unfamiliar with the
existing SWORD API. You're right though, there is great potential in porting
to .NET. In regards to what some have commented, that .NET support isn't so
good on Linux and Mac at the time... well I think the purpose of this is to
take advantage of the current power and capabilities that .NET offers, e.g.,
web services, ASP.NET, rapid UI development, etc.

Please contact me at bry@myrealbox.com if you're interested in starting up
something.

Bryant Huang