Re: RFC: Language and fork issues with onscripter
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Hello,
I was interested in onscripter by Insani some time ago, and contacted
the upstream. I would like to share the reasons why I did not package
this software. Note that this information may be out of date.
Bryan Donlan wrote:
> I've been looking at onscripter as a program to package. It's a GPL'd
> clone of the 'nScripter' game engine, which is frequently used for
> Japanese visual novel games. insani.org has created an (apparently
> friendly) fork of onscripter with support for English 1byte character
> sets, and English localizations, for use in visual novel translation
> projects. It seems to be compatible with original Japanese nscripter
> games as well, however game engine strings can only be toggled between
> English and Japanese with a compile-time preprocessor define.
Insani guys did not really fork onscripter. It is more like the
situation with Debian and Ubuntu. They take the original onscripter, and
modify it to work with one particular novel. The changes they make may
or may not be integrated into onscripter. The problems is that the
changes sometimes (often?) break compatibility with other novels.
They distribute novel/onscripter packages as static binaries (much like
proprietary games), and do not provide any support. This means that the
application will continue to run, even if libraries change, but one may
be unable to rebuild it from source. There also is no guarantee that new
onscripter releases will be compatible with past-release novels.
> Should I name this package onscripter-insani to reflect that it is a
> fork or simply onscripter? What's the generally accepted practice to
> build a package twice with different CFLAGS? I'm using cdbs here, but
> this is my first package using it so any pointers would be greatly
> appreciated.
I concluded that it makes little sense to package onscripter by Insani,
because one particular release is only guaranteed to work only with one
particular novel. I also did not package the original onscripter,
because it would only be used by Japanese-speaking people, and my very
limited knowledge of Japanese was a blocker.
I repeat, this is based on old experience. They may have improved on
their compatibility issues. Although they clearly stated that this is of
minor importance to them, so I doubt it.
Good luck,
Linas
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