Can i just write a simple C shared library or DLL which calls the C++ ? So
you are repackaging the C++ as a C library? I can’t see how this tack could
fail to work. Just repackage C++ as C.

You would have to come up with a procedural less OOP-ish API i guess.  You
could have C API functions F which take an Object as F’s first input and in
this way each C++ Method becomes a C function. You only need wrap as much
of the C++ API as you want to use and each C function just calls its C++
Method so making the wrappers is highly simple and mechanical i should
think. it could even be automated. But i know some C++ but have never made
anything in it.

I suppose that if Smalltalk cannot contain a C++ Object then you could make
a C struct which can be in Smalltalk and you have the API function copy
this struct into the C++ Object then act on it then copy the Object data
back into the struct which is in Smalltalk. But that’s a lot of work.
Surely you can have a pointer to a C++ Object in Smalltalk.

Maybe it would be better to have a separate C++ program P that you
communicate with by sockets using Object handles H which are just Integer
Array indexes into an Array of Objects in P? i suppose there could be a
shared lib L that FFI could call which could call back program P if sockets
were too slow or something.

I guess Dolphin can  input a Smalltalk BlockClosure B into an FFI call to L
which could input B into program P which could call B to get back into
Dolphin but i haven’t tried it myself.

I guess there is a Smalltalk interface to Python via a socket and then from
Python to C++ is easy? Seems like a code generator that has all this stuff
figured out could be good. I think VisualWorks is probably good at
connecting to C++ via FFI. What about chicken scheme or any of the C based
Schemes? What about Smalltalk/X?

borgLisp is an idea to make multiple Lisp dialects each isomorphic to its
target language like C or C++ or Python or Ruby or Prolog or java or C# or
Scheme or Rust etc any language can have an isomorphic Lisp dialect
targeting it in order to bind all the languages into a single borgLisp
where you can mix and match all the languages together. Where each Lisp
dialect is just a simple Lisp code generator. And so once all the languages
are in Lisp then all the Lisp things can be used to mix and match all the
languages together and using Nix to set up and configure everything so
everything works together one click like. all the different languages. so
they can all work together in an easy generative format. So every language
becomes Lisp and Lisp becomes every language. Using code generation you
could even make a Debugger in Lisp and Smalltalk which could source debug
any language like the Smalltalk debugger does for Smalltalk.

but i guess this is off the topic

On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 06:07 Ben Coman <btc at openinworld.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, 2 Nov 2018 at 18:44, Edwin Ancaer <eancaer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello list,
>>
>> As I'm looking at a way to automate the search of documents in my humble
>> administration, I read some articles about OCR. I came along an article
>> about using Python with Tesseract, to transform an scan of a document into
>> text, that is searchable.
>>
>> My question now is if I can do something similar with Squeak. To my
>> inexperienced eye, it seems like I should use FFI to call the functions in
>> the Tesseract API, but this API is in  C++, and I don't know if it is
>> possible to use FFI to call C++ functions?
>>
>
> You are right C++ is difficult because of the name mangling of function
> symbols,
> but good fortune I notice Tesseract has C bindings...
>     https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract#for-developers
>     https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/blob/master/src/api/capi.h
> so it looks like you are in the clear.
>
>
> Or should I forget the API and use OSProcess to start the tesseract
>> program?
>>
>
> FFI will be more flexible.
>
>
> Could anyone point me in the right direction, or just tell  if the whole
>> idea is insane?
>>
>
> I think its a great idea and actually Tesseract FFI is something I've
> wanted to play with before but not had the time.
> I'd be interested to hear how you go with it.
>
> cheers -ben
>
>
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