Well, this is not final. Onl.y developers are likely to test
BrailleBlaster at this stage. However, I can provide a single download
for each platform and architecture. That will be simpler in some ways.
One problem is that my machines and compilers are all 64-bit. Volunteers
are needed to produce the 32-bit versions of liblouis and liblouisutdml.
We should also probably have volunteers who can produce the libraries
for Mac PowerPC's. However, I wonder if there are versions of swt for
the PowerPC.
John
On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:48:14PM +0100, Michael Whapples wrote:
I would possibly say that in final things that is really expected to be used by
users, installation should be as simple as possible. Therefore I feel it should
be a single download the user would need to do.
There are probably sufficient platform specific parts that it would not be reasonable (if
possible) to include binaries for all platforms. Therefore there are likely to be
platform specific downloads. However to have a common download plus a platform specific
download is more downloads for the user than can be achieved. It probably is best for
compiled versions to simply have "ready to run" downloads for each platform.
This is normally what is done. Normally there is also a source distribution, which should
not contain dependencies but this should not be a problem as anyone building from source
is probably a more advanced user or at least is reading documents.
I know sometimes it may feel a waste of space to duplicate the common code in
each platform specific download, however consider how large actually is the
common code in this case? Is that bit of duplication and slight inefficiency
worth the benefit of user experience? I feel it is.
Michael Whapples
On 11 Aug 2011, at 03:06, John J. Boyer wrote:
BrailleBlaster is now able to translate and format on all three
platforms. In the next few days I may be posting messages about
particular problems in preparing for the next release. In this message I
would like to ask for suggestions for setting up a preliminary
distribution system that is not too onerous for the users and not too
hard to implement.
I am thinking of having a base download containing all the
platform-independent components and a README explaining how to add the
platform-dependent ones. There would be a download for each platform. It
willl contain the swt.jar for that platform and the liblouis and
liblouisutdml libraries.
Volunteers will be needed to produce some of the platform-dependent
downloads. For example, someone with a 32-bit Windows system and a
32-bit Microsoft C/C++ compiler will be needed.
More mesages will follow. For now, i would appreciate suggestions on
the distribution system.
Thanks,
John
--
John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer
Abilitiessoft, Inc.
http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Madison, Wisconsin USA
Developing software for people with disabilities
