[aspell-devel] Re: pspell/aspell on Windows

[Kevin Atkinson]

Some on Wrote:

> Firstly, thanks for providing these programs, they seem to be
> very well done.

Thanks.

> Secondly, I have a need to link the libraries into an application that
> is built using visual studio (I don't have source code so can't port to
> cygwin)  and it would seem that the cygwin/gcc generated stuff is
> completely incompatible with this. I also see that there is no good way
> to generate .DLLs. However, perhaps there is a way generate VS linkable
> libraries and I just don't know enough about the cygwin libtool etc.

It *should* be possible to create a dll with gcc that you can link to with 
VS via the extern "C" interface.  I do not know how to do this through.

> I would go and look this all up, but instead, I wonder if you have any
> interest in me generating a VS.Net build of your code. 

Not really

> A lot of poeple
> have done this for the reasons cited above (icu stuff for instance). I
> will probaly do this anyway, so if you want it, I could provide the
> effort and send the project defs etc to you. No need to stop building
> the cygwin stuff of course. However, there are one or two things in C++
> that gcc will allow and VC++.Net will not. Usually it is some part of
> the C++ standard that one copmiler allows but the other does not. I
> would need to change make minor structural changes to the calls
> implmentations so that things compiled correctly with both compilers.

Please be aware that other people have tried porting my code to VC++ and
have given up.  My code is rather demanding as far as C++ compliance goes.

Whatever you do please work with the New Aspell and not the old as the old 
Aspell/Pspell combination is no longer going to be maintained except for 
minor bug fixes.

> I sympathise with your hopes that someone will help change the autoconf
> stuff with you. Autoconf is a nightmare and should be abandonded IMO, it
> is so convoluted that most people end up releasing configure scripts
> that don't quite cope with everything. I think a much better tool is JAM
> (see http://www.perforce.com/perforce/loadsupp.html as the
> confoiguration stuff is much much easier. I also think that perforce is
> very much better than CVS, and Perforce supply it free to open source
> projects, but it seemes hard to get people to look at changing from CVS.
> I might be interested in putting a little effort into producing a JAM
> version, though I need to do the task at hand first! If you have had no
> takers for your requests for help on various things as per your readme,
> then I might see if I can put a little time into it for you. I have 16
> years of programming under my belt: microcode, assembly, C, C++,
> yac/lex, compilers etc etc, so I shodl not ahve a problem finding my way
> around your stuff :-).

I think I will stick with autoconf and cvs until a better open source 
solution is found.  While they both have there problems it is what 
everyone is using and both or the defacto standard among the open 
source community.

> Finally, I note that you are contemplating an auto code documenting
> tool. You probably know this, but the best thing around right now is
> doxygen, which gives you javadoc capablities and more for C and C++
> among other things. Freeware of course. It is trivial to learn and you
> coudl probably have this done very quickly.

There are a lot of other tools around also.  Another problem is that most 
of my interface code is generated so I would rather create the documents 
from the templates rather than the generated source.

--- 
http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org