Re: Writing PDF files

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> Le Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:03:38 +0200, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
> <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> a écrit:
>> And according to http://plplot.sourceforge.net/ there already is an
>> Ada binding (otherwise, this a C story).
> Potentially appealing too, is the license, which is *L*GPL.
>
> However, it is not clear to me if with LGPL, you are required to
> dynamically link only or if you also can use static library link
> without  fears. I just had a look at the Wikipedia entry, which is no
> more clear  than my mind:
>
>> Essentially, if it is a "work that uses the library", then it must be
>> possible for the software to be linked with a newer version of the
>> LGPL-covered program. The most commonly used method for doing so is
>> to use "a suitable shared library mechanism for linking". Alternatively,
>> a statically linked library is allowed if either source code or
>> linkable object files are provided.
> What does that mean ? Which sources are you required to provide ? The
> one of the library or the one of the application statically linked to
> it ?

I don't see those words in COPYING.LIB version 2 as distributed with
plplot (and I thought you don't hold with Wikipedia???!).

I believe it's generally thought that the LGPL is inappropriate for Ada
source code with generics.

However, the plplot bindings have no generics, so may be OK. But I think
that for statically-linked proprietary executables using plplot you
would have to supply at least object code for your proprietary
application so that the user could relink with a newer version of
plplot.

Sounds fraught with difficulty.