[Pkg-crosswire-devel] ICU and stability issues

[DM Smith]

On Jan 26, 2009, at 5:58 PM, Matthew Talbert wrote:

>> Matthew Talbert wrote:
>>
>>> However, GnomeSword and BibleTime both provide their own string  
>>> casing
>>> function for this purpose, both using standard unicode definitions  
>>> to
>>> provide casing. So, as I've said, even if SWORD is built with ICU,  
>>> it
>>> will provide no benefit to the end user, and may lead to stability
>>> issues.
>>
>> I think it would be a real help in making this choice appropriately  
>> if we could get someone (you?) to create a replicable test case,  
>> where a libsword 1.5.11-based setup compiled with ICU reliably  
>> causes stability issues, but one without ICU does not.  Ideally the  
>> app used in the test would be a non-interactive command line tool,  
>> so we're not dependent on big GUI apps and users clicking on a  
>> bunch of things in order to test.
>>
>> Likewise, I'd be happy to see someone (else) create a test case  
>> where a search fails when using the 1.5.11 library with ICU  
>> disabled, but works with it enabled.  Maybe this is as simple as
>>
>> sudo installmgr -ri X Y
>> diatheke <some options here>
>>
>> (But right now, I don't have a known set of X, Y and <some options  
>> here> that I know will act as such a test case!).
>>
>> Once we have repeatable test cases, we can then either fix the  
>> stability issue with a patch at build time, or we can make an  
>> informed decision decide to build without ICU.  If there is an  
>> existing (replicable) bug report that has good info on this, do  
>> please point me at it.
>>
>> If libsword packagers are going to get squeezed between frontend  
>> developers who say ICU causes stability issues and should be  
>> disabled, and others in the sword-devel community who say it is  
>> really does cause loss of functionality to disable it, so it should  
>> be enabled... then I'd like to see some clear test evidence, from  
>> both sets of people, to help  us packagers make a sane choice!  Is  
>> that realistic?
>>
>
> I have asked for those saying GnomeSword will not search correctly
> without ICU to submit just such a test case, but have not seen any.
>
> There is a thread here,
> http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/2009-January/030641.html 
> ,
> that while not an official bug report, does indicate the problems, and
> upstream's action of immediately disabling many of the filters
> constitutes to me an admission that they do cause problems.

Matthew,
I saw the checkin disabling many of the transliteration filters. I  
think it was stated here that none of the Linux front-ends expose the  
transliteration filters. None of the modules mention them. So I can't  
see how they would cause a problem. I didn't see any other changes to  
the SWORD engine regarding ICU or any other admission to ICU causing a  
problem.

The only filters that use ICU are utf8arshaping, utf8bidireorder, and  
uft8nfc, utf8nfkd. The first two are used to display right-to-left  
texts. The other two are used by module builders, but I couldn't find  
anywhere else that they were used by the engine.

I found that diatheke uses ICU extensively.

Maybe I don't understand SWORD well enough, but I can't see where  
including ICU and not using transliterators causes a problem.

I'd suggest, that sword-tools are compiled with ICU and, perhaps, that  
libsword7 is not.

While uconv (not iconv) can eliminate the need for ICU in osis2mod and  
tei2mod, I added it precisely because people were creating modules  
that were not NFC. I think it is a necessary convenience.

In Him,
	DM