[libvoikko] hfst-ospell and Windows [Was: The future of zhfst]

[Harri Pitkänen]

On Wednesday 11 December 2013 16:17:40 Sjur Moshagen wrote:
> That is, the only external dependency required for libarchive except system
> libs seems to be zlib. This is quite reasonable, and means that the total
> list of dependencies for hfst support in Libvoikko is now down to the
> following:
> 
> * hfst-ospell
> * tinyxml
> * libarchive
> * zlib
> 
> I don’t see how this list can be squeezed further, and I don’t see any major
> need for it either.

That looks good to me.

> Now - back to the original subject: with the dependency list considerably
> shortened, would it be possible to enable hfst support by default, and
> build and release a version of the LibreOffice Voikko plugin with Hfst
> support enabled? This is the One Big Thing that everyone in the
> Giellatekno/Divvun community is waiting for, since being able to support
> the Windows users is the number one requirement.

I think we can use the already released (binary version of) libreoffice-voikko 
for Windows. We just need to build another version of libvoikko with the 
necessary dependencies enabled.

I will have a look at it before the end of year. But who will handle 
documentation and support for the end users? I think it should be someone who 
knows the target language(s). If we can find two or three people who agree to 
do this for at least few years we could set up a localized download site under 
our web site. I could take care of providing Windows builds and supporting the 
Finnish users.

Looking at the mailing list archives I see no responses to my release 
candidate announcements for libvoikko 3.7rc1, 3.6.1rc1 or 3.6rc1 which are the 
three releases that have shipped with HFST as a non-experimental backend. 
There are no automated tests that cover HFST support. And there are no 
downstream users of libvoikko that are known to enable HFST support (if we 
don't count the people who develop the library or related technologies). Thus 
we should still require --enable-hfst so that people who _build_ the library 
know that they are doing something relatively exceptional. Let's make it 
default once people start feeling more comfortable with that option. After 
all, this has no effect on end users.

Harri