Re: ITL php code

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad at cs dot toronto dot edu>]

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Nadim Shaikli wrote:

> Omar, the idea is to download and install the ITL library along with
> PHP code (which you'll write) that accesses that ITL C-library (you
> can replace ITL with fribidi or any other library).  The question now
> is not if accessing C code from you application is doable, its a
> question of how its done.  Some programs have native support to do
> that (ie. its embedded within the programming language itself - a
> feature if you will) others depend on external "bridging" (if you
> can even call it that).  An example of an external connecting
> application (again I'm not sure if PHP (or Java) can't do this
> natively) is SWIG,
>
>   http://www.swig.org

SWIG is a good choice too, it does the job for a few languages
at once.

> If need be, we can add these "interface (*.i)" files to the ITL
> library so as to ease people's life (so they don't have to port
> anything and simply call the functions - again this is a library
> after all :-)  So instead of you having ported all the library's
> code to PHP you would have simply written PHP code to access the
> public C functions (akin to 'ipraytime' or 'idate') and that
> simplifies life for everyone involved - you'll simply have to worry
> about the interface/function calls (or API) changing and not give
> a hoot about the internals of the library.

Please make sure you choose a more verbose name than "idate".  In
PHP I know you're simply not allowed to choose such a name.

> Hope that makes more sense.
>
> PS: Gents, do please trim your replies to include only relevant text.
> Salam.
>
>  - Nadim

--behdad
  behdad.org