Versions prior to 1.0 used libdl/libltdl, and that made types and functions much easier to use, since you didn't have to define DICE_Functions and DICE_Types. Types were registered only when a variable of that type was created, saving memory.
The problem is that libltdl is not 100% portable. Although I successfully tested in Linux x86 and IRIX, Windows needed Cygwin to run. To tell you the truth, I didn't care too much, but other people did. ;-) So, I decided to get rid of libltdl by default, leading to a more cumbersome library. I believe that Windows LoadLibrary functions could be used instead.
If you don't need to run your programs in Windows and would like to use libltdl, run ``configure -with-ltdl''9.1. Here are the differences: