[sword-devel] CVS Tree lost icu-sword branches

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Jonathan,
	My apologies for not mentioning this early.  I recall that you said you 
found an icu dll in your OpenOffice directory?  This cannot be a usable 
dll for sword IMO.  The correct DLL can be found on our alpha under the 
link 'misc alpha files'.  Chris Little maintains ICU and I think this 
can only be built currently with the MSVC compiler.  I believe it is 
merely the data for ICU.  If you cannot find the correct file, I would 
ask Chris which one you should use.  This may very well be the problem.

[more below]


Jonathan Mickelson wrote:
> Troy,
> 
> I had commented out the offending lines in BibleCS and though it 
> executed, all it did was show the splash screen, hide it, show the 
> outline of the main form and immediately terminated.  I stepped thru the 
> program, but it did not make sense as to why it quit 
> application->run().  There were no exceptions and no errors.  In less 
> than 20 steps, the program was finished executing.  I'm still too 
> unfamiliar with the 30+ million lines of code the BCB6 said it compiled 
> to produce a 4+MB executable (I know a lot of that was header files).
> 
> I've read the many forum postings concerning BCB6 issues and the one 
> about the two good fellows who got BCB6 to work properly.  I had hoped 
> that the code would have been tagged in the CVS tree as a milestone, so 
> I went looking for that build knowing that the current CVS tree was in 
> flux.  That's how I found "the rest of the story" concerning icu-sword.
> 
>  From the forum postings, I got the impression that BCB6 is the unwanted 
> stepchild of the Sword project.  I don't mind hanging in there with BCB6 
> if there's an actual desire to see it come to fruition.  However, It 
> will take some coordination.

BCB6 should work just fine.  I just never upgraded.  I was waiting for 
BCB7 but it just seems like that may never exist.  I'm still using BCB5 
mostly but have a free version BCB6 on a VMWare image that can use.  I'm 
trying a build right now...


> On the Linux side, I presume your are using KDE, KDevelop, Qt3 based on 
> web site information for BibleTime.  Has that changed?

I'm sure that is probably what the BibleTime guys use.  They can speak 
better than me.  I use Fedora Core 1, Gnome2, Enlightenment, and mostly vi.


> I'm impressed with the different projects that are going on 
> (multiplatform development, language modules, flash cards/tutors, 
> serious web interface development and various side projects that I'm 
> picking up on).  I can tell that development is moving at a break neck 
> pace with a lot of excitement behind the scenes about the progress that 
> is being made on some really cool pet projects that really raise the bar 
> for this genre of software.  Is there a list of the various projects and 
> who is working on them?  BTW, who has responsibility for BibleCS?  I'm 
> guessing that Joachim has responsibility for BibleTime.
> 
> I'm surprised at Borland for making BCB6 non-backwards-compatible with 
> BCB5.  Any insight as the the major differences and pifalls?

It's pretty backwards-compatible.  It's really not much more than just 
keeping the project files in sync, since I don't use it all the time. 
I'd be glad for you to own the BCB6 project files. :)


> Finally, I've taken a look at BibleStudy's source code using wxWindows 
> last updated April 2003.  Is there any thought of having a basic 
> cross-platform frontend for sword among the core developers -OR- is it 
> preferred that everyone have the privilege of creating their own 
> front-end for the platforms they want to use.  I haven't figured out the 
> end-goal yet.  My observations are that all the slick, frontline 
> development is put into BibleTime with all the other applications 
> playing catch up.  This implies there is intimate development 
> cooperation between BibleTime developers and SWORD API developers.  
> Wonderful! It makes for a great team.  If this is indeed the case, what 
> do we do with BibleCS?

Well, believe it or not (the BibleTime guys may not agree :)  ), BibleCS 
usually uses more of the latest features than any of the frontends. 
It's not very asthetically pleasing, but I think has the same 
functionality as most of the other frontends.  I originally wrote 
BibleCS, and it is good for me to have the experience of building a 
complex client of the API.  I would very much like to have other major 
contributors to the Windows frontend.  You can also find a prototype of 
a new user interface on the alpha page and probably in CVS somewhere. 
It's hard for me to get time to work on the Windows side.


> If BibleTime is the avant guard of Crosswire's development, it would 
> behoove us keep permanent milestones of working libraries that the rest 
> of the Crosswire family can code to while BibleTime forges ahead with 
> the latest and greatest.  This would allows hobbyists and other 
> researchers to develop their own custom application based on a stable 
> API set and upgrade later if and when they desire.  How do you envision 
> all this working?  Is there already a model in place that I've missed?
> I'm really intrigued to know the inside scoop cause I'm picking up a lot 
> of excited activity on the radar.

We usually keep source releases of all public version available on our 
ftp site: ftp://ftp.crosswire.org/pub/sword/source/

Any on these should be stable to build clients against.

Coordination is usually done live at: irc.freenode.net #sword
And on each project's mailing list:
sword-devel
bt-devel
jsword-devel

MacSword and GnomeSword have lists on SF, I think.

I hope this answers some of your questions, and that more people might 
reply to others.

	-Troy.