Sword Home Page

Latest news

SWORD version 1.0.0 is out. See in the download section to get it. This version features very important cleanup and stable code. It is production ready. The Visual Studio 7.1 workspace is available, workspace vor VS6.0 and Unix makefiles will follow shortly. This release supports the following platforms:

• MsWindows with Visual C++ 6.0, and 7.1
• MacOSX 10.3 with GCC 3.x
• GNU/Linux with GCC 3.x
• SUN Solaris with SunCC 5.x

Historically, I used the name "Sword" as early as mid 1990s in a C++ graphical user interface framework for MsDOS. This work had quite a success within the scope of GCC for DOS toolchain (DJGPP distribution). It even has been continued by some external contributors such as this one.

In the years 2000, as graphical user interface frameworks such as QT became usable, I focused on areas where most frameworks usually lack quality or robustness.

What is it ?

SWORD is a general-purpose C++ library, which comes as a complement to ACE and for the GUI part QT in order to build high preformance, high quality, portable C++ software. It provides the developer with (major features only):

• Date/Time management,
• Command line management,
• Logging,
• Configuration files read / write / access,
• String and STL tools,
• Exception handling helpers,
• Smart Pointer,
• Database access,
• Very fast primitives types <-> string formatting / parsing
• Streaming framework,
• GUI: auto-completion input line,
• GUI: enhanced table for large and powerfull grids

SWORD is Open Source, released under the GNU LGPL. The library is classified as "Beta" because there are many features that are not yet stabilized or implemented before qualifying for a "1.0", but all documented features are stable and used in production in several critical applications (real time trading software for instance).

Where to start ?

You can go to the Download section in order to get the documentation and the latest release. You should then follow the instructions in sword/INSTALL.TXT for installing and compiling the library. Finally, a suite of tests is available, which you can have a look at if you need examples.

How to help / contribute ?

As any Open Source initiative, Sword needs your help. What you can do (for instance):

• Use the library, report any bug, any wish you may have about it,
• Contribute patches (bug fixes, small improvements),
• Contribute features (let us discuss them beforehand !),
• Tell about Sword to other developers so that we grow a community,
• Give out money or hardware to support the development (Contact me for that)

Who is doing it

Eric Nicolas is the main author for Sword. Other contributors are liste in the sword/AUTHORS.txt file. The web hosting for this site is freely made available by Dvdfr.com.

A belarus translation for this page can be found here. Thanks to Michail Bogdaov for this.
A serbo-croatian translation for this page can be found here. Thanks to Vera Djuraskovic from Webhostinggeeks.com for this.