rug-compling/alpinocorpus — comment on commit d118c8de40689c91a01d5d097f5127565f6ec318
File:  line 0
By pebbe:

(Is anyone reading this who doesn't understand Dutch?)

Why would you need the library version? Because there are versions. Because old versions may not contain the functionality of newer versions. Libraries should provide version number and capabilities through a config header (unless the set of capabilities is fixed for a version), and also by means of a pc file, or a command that can be run like one of these:

package-config --version
package-config --prefix
package-config --cflags

etc.

Now, I build Alpinocorpus without USE_DBXML. Then I build Dact. I run Dact. I do File -> Open... I can select files of type Dact corpora (*.dact *.dact.dz). I select a dact file. Then I get an error message, "Cannot open file.dact". No explanation. This shouldn't happen!

When building Dact, it should check if alpinocorpus can handle dact files, and if it can't, it should not give the user the option to open a dact file.

Someone who checks ALPINOCORPUS_WITH_DBXML does so because he wants to know if he can pass a dact file to CorpusReader. If using DbCorpusReader directly is a problem, it is a problem no matter if there is such a define as ALPINOCORPUS_WITH_DBXML available or not.

Similarly for opening a remote corpus. If alpinocorpus can't handle SSL, then Dact should tell the user only http is allowed, and not wait until alpinocorpus throws an error.