Gnomesword, libsword, diatheke, sword modules, bibletime

[Refdoc]

Hi,

I am one of the developers at CrossWire. Several of our programmes are
in your repository, but they are ancient, often 2 or more releases
behind us.

I have tried on several occasions to contact the maintainer listed but
to little avail.

I asked eventually on #ubuntu-devel and was advised to mail to you.

As we see it, following is wrong:

1) libsword is at 1.5.11 - if you wait a couple of weeks probably at
1.5.12.  You keep 1.5.9. 1.5.9 is nearly 2 years old. The functional
increase is massive.

2) libsword should be compiled with ICU to allow it full function. It is
not.

3) you should not maintain sword modules as all our programmes have a
module manager which will download modules directly. Installing modules
via apt-get renders the module manager non-functional as the modules are
installed by apt-get into non user writable areas (/usr/share/sword
instead of ~/.sword)

4) diatheke is a commandline utility which can if carefully handled also
be used as a base for CGI script. The example CGI code coming along with
it is not meant to be exposed to the internet - at least not in this
form.  Therefore the dependency on Apache is wrong. Most users will use
diatheke only as commandline routine, never as CGI.

5) Gnomesword is ancient history. All bug reports you have on file for
GS are sorted in upodated versions. Our last release was 2.4.1. we are
currently moving towards the next release - a week or two.

There is probably more to it, but to be honest for years now we direct
everyone to our own debs as Ubuntu and Debian are so out of date.

I would therefore extremely grateful if someone could take this one up
or advise us how to go about submitting a new set of packages ourselves.

Thanks!