Help me find a Major/Phonetic system mnemonic program for OSX! **or** Help me compile & run this mnemonic program that I've been assured *cannot* be run in OSX!

October 6, 2005 9:12 PM

Help me find a Major/Phonetic system mnemonic program for OSX! **or** Help me compile & run this mnemonic program that I've been assured *cannot* be run in OSX!

I'm trying to get a program running on my computer to help with the Major System aka the Phonetic System. (Info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_system) (It's basically a mnemonic system that turns numbers into consonant sounds that you can make words out of. "Toads", for example is t/d[1] t/d[1] s/z[0] = 110. Computer programs help in this endeavor, because it is easy to convert a given number into consonant sounds (1973 = t/d-p/b-k/g-m) but it's relatively difficult to turn those sounds into a word. (tabegim? tipkem?) Programs can be made to search an english dictionary for appropriate words.

So far, it appears Mnemisis (http://mnemisis.sourceforge.net/ ) is my best/only bet. However, when I try to configure it, this occurs:

% ./configure
loading cache ./config.cache
checking for c++... c++
checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) works... yes
checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ ) is a cross-compiler... no
checking whether we are using GNU C++... yes
checking whether c++ accepts -g... yes
checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... c++ -E
checking for ctype.h... yes
checking for regex.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for streambuf.h... no
configure: error: couldn't find needed C header for back end


streambuf.h is on my system in the /backward directory, and has, from what I understand, been flagged by Apple as a broken header file. As I've heard, the solution is an update to Mnemesis, but this seems unlikely, since Mnemesis was last updated in 2003.

posted by sdis to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Can you change the code, build, and configuration files to reference the standard c++ header <streambuf> instead of <streambuf.h>?
posted by RichardP at 9:37 PM on October 6, 2005

I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to UNIX and C++, unfortunately. I wouldn't know where to begin (only figured out the ./configure command with the help of the detailed HTML help file on their website)
posted by sdis at 9:51 PM on October 6, 2005

have you tried linking streambuf.h to your include dir?
posted by zerokey at 10:06 PM on October 6, 2005

Just noticed that the above comment was yours...

try:

ln -s wherever-backward-dir-is/streambuf.h /usr/include/


I'm going to hunt up an OSX box and test...one of my favorite things do do in OSX is compile the supposedly uncompilable :)
posted by zerokey at 10:09 PM on October 6, 2005

zerokey writes "Just noticed that the above comment was yours...

"try:

"ln -s wherever-backward-dir-is/streambuf.h /usr/include/


"I'm going to hunt up an OSX box and test...one of my favorite things do do in OSX is compile the supposedly uncompilable :)"

Just remember, he did mention that part of the issue was that streambuf was listed as a broken header, so bringing it into the include directory may not be enough. Looking at the header it seems like the streambuf library is supposed to be standard c++, so it should be all good, though.

Good luck!
posted by ChrisR at 10:34 PM on October 6, 2005

ChrisR - *nod* I caught that :) It never hurts to try, though (just as long as you clean up the link if it doesn't work!)

Unfortunately, it seems that I have no macs handy (*weeps*)
posted by zerokey at 10:47 PM on October 6, 2005

It says:
ln -s /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk/usr/include/gcc/darwin/4.0/c++/backward/streambuf.h /usr/include/
ln: /usr/include//streambuf.h: File exists


This is probably because I went around my system looking for stdlib.h and moving copies of streambuf.h into those folders.
posted by sdis at 9:36 AM on October 7, 2005

This is probably because I went around my system looking for stdlib.h and moving copies of streambuf.h into those folders.

Can't speak to your compiler issue, but this is a very bad idea in the UNIX world. You'll wind up with out-of-sync copies of files. "ln -s" is your friend.
posted by mkultra at 10:55 AM on October 7, 2005

Yeah..just went around and undid what I did, though the compiling's not working either way. :P
posted by sdis at 11:17 AM on October 7, 2005