Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 21:28:49 +0200
From: Alexander Bokovoy <bokovoy AT bspu DOT ac DOT by>
Reply-To: Alexander Bokovoy <bokovoy AT bspu DOT ac DOT by>
Organization: BSPU named after Maxim Tank
Message-ID: <17895.980309@bspu.unibel.by>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: SWORD
References: <3 DOT 0 DOT 5 DOT 32 DOT 19980309115155 DOT 007d05d0 AT pop DOT iquest DOT net>
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Hi Ricki,

you wrote:

> I am a beginner but i want to play with gui
> programs. is sword the best library for that?
> thanks
This is true but with some remarks. SWORD is a powerful system for
dedicated programmers. You can learn GUI development with SWORD - it
was specially designed for this, but at this moment documentation is
not clear for beginners. Also SWORD rapidly improves now by team of
volunteers and soon will have different object scheme than previous
versions (I mean v.2.10 and v.2.50).

If these difficulties don't touch you, you are welcome to the SWORD
world :). As a member of SWORD development team I'll help you, but, as
Eli said before, if question formulated clearly and if you understand
what do you want. (I learned SWORD without anybody's help and only
after approximately half of year I found in Internet Eric Nicolas - an
author of original SWORD).

There are three different version of SWORD exists now.

  -- 1st is an original SWORD 2.10 developed by Eric Nicolas (you can
     find it on the any Simtel mirror in djgpp/v2tk/ directory)

  -- 2nd is our project SWORD 2.50b with improvements and bug fixes (it
     available at http://www.bspu.unibel.by/sword/)

  -- 3nd is latest SWORD 3.0beta03 (beta04 will be published soon). As
     for last version - it is new stage in SWORD evolution. All classes are
     completely rewritten, SWORD 3.0 has good portability - it compiles
     either under Unix or Windows and now under MS DOS - thanks to Robert
     Hoehne for his port of GCC 2.8.0 because new SWORD has massive using
     of exception handling. But this edition of SWORD always in beta state
     (even in alpha, if we say about graphics gadgets). It is
     available at http://193.55.36.92/enicolas/sword/

So, you can choose your way itself. I suggest you start with SWORD
2.50 and get power of SWORD 3.0 later, when stable and more powerful
GUI gadgets will be implemented in it. Also you can subscribe to SWORD
mailing list using http://homepages.enta.net/~basoft/ in the section
"New features development".

Sincerely,
Alexander Bokovoy, <bokovoy AT bspu DOT unibel DOT by>
--=== The Soft Age coming soon ===--