Re: [Bug-ocrad] Some compatibility issues

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hello Elmar. Thanks for your interest in Ocrad.

Elmar Plischke wrote:
> I've just compiled ocrad under SUN/Solaris using the native compiler.
>  However, there are some minor issues to report:
>
> configure/Makefile combo does not respect the CXX and CXXFLAGS 
> environment variables. Maybe it's time to use some autoconf-magic.

GNU Ocrad does not use Autoconf or Automake, nor uses any environment
variable, nor defines any macro, nor uses conditional compilation. Any 
data necessary to build Ocrad on a non-GNU system should be passed to 
configure in the command line.

Ocrad is an OCR program. It is not a build system nor a package manager. 
I won't bloat Ocrad with configuration code. Any user unable to compile 
Ocrad should use a precompiled binary for his distro or system.


> The lines
> void ...error( const char * msg ) throw() __attribute__ ((noreturn));
> in common.h, rectangle.cc and track.cc should be protected by an 
> #ifdef _GNUC__/#endif pair

I use what I need and GCC offers. It is a problem of standards or 
compilers, not a problem of Ocrad.


> In main.cc, note that <getopt.h>, getopt_long() are GNU, the standard
>  lib offers only an interface via
> int getopt(int argc, char * const *argv,  const  char  *opt- string);
>  extern char *optarg; extern int optind, opterr, optopt;

Ocrad is also GNU and uses GNU features. It is not my fault if people 
wants to use GNU software on non-GNU systems, nor is my duty to adapt 
Ocrad to other systems.


> One more to go: snprintf() seems to be part of C99, but (Sun) C++ has
>  no wrapper for it. I circumvented this problem by using a format 
> string with a precision argument, so that the string is truncated by 
> sprintf.

It seems that `snprintf' is not part of the C++ standard, but using 
`sprintf' makes the programs vulnerable to errors and attacks, so I 
won't use it. See this from the GLIBC manual:

     *Warning:* The `sprintf' function can be *dangerous* because it
     can potentially output more characters than can fit in the
     allocation size of the string S.  Remember that the field width
     given in a conversion specification is only a _minimum_ value.
     To avoid this problem, you can use `snprintf' or `asprintf',
     described below.


Best regards,
Antonio Diaz.