Dynamically linking with a Unix library - or not

[Francois Gouget]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
[...]
> Adding a ./configure option to do so would probably be quite feasable (I
> don't know how to do it at the moment, but I am sure that will not be
> the disqualifying factor), but I have been quite hesitant to go that way
> until now, for the following reasons:
> A. Fribidi will have to be present during building WINE. That, in
> itself, is not a majour obstacle, but
> B. Having Fribidi present during compile will add Fribidi to the WINE
> dependancies.

A way to deal with B is to do like for FreeType, i.e. load the library
dynamically at runtime, and disable support for it if that fails.

But I have another question which you have probably already envisioned
(might even have already discussed on the list though I can't remember
right now): FriBiDi being a Unix Unicode library, I assume it uses
4-byte Unicode characters? Won't it be a problem since Wine uses 2-byte
Unicode characters?

That may be another argument for integrating FriBiDi with Wine, or
maybe:
 * adding a compile option so that FriBiDi works with either 2 or 4 byte
   characters
 * make it possible to write a configure check to detect whether the
   FriBiDi library is compiled for 2 or 4 byte characters
 * then packagers would compile Wine with this special FriBiDi library,
   and ship it with Wine

How does that sound?

--
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a Thousand Caramels.