[openglean-devel]New joystick support in the GLUT family (OpenGLEAN 0.5)

[Richard R. <sf...@ol...>]

Well, I released OpenGLEAN 0.5 around 6am on the 19th.  Around
5 or 6 hours later, the freeglut project owner made it clear that
he would not, after all, want those same features in freeglut.  I'm
puzzled why he took so long to speak about it.

In any case, this is both bad and good.

It's bad that he didn't speak up earlier.  In a desire to keep
abreast of other GLUT family features, I added the new joystick
API support to OpenGLEAN because it had been discussed on the
freeglut lists and the developers seemed to be set on retaining
the features.  I did not think that the freeglut project owner
would care for the features, but as he remained silent for...1
month? 2?...I began to accept that this would be another case of
ill-conceived features being added to freeglut.  Unlike the
glutMouseWheelFunc() callback registration, however, this at least
seemed to extend the API functionality.  I just would rather have
seen some people think about the API rather than exposing something
that one freeglut developer had sloppily defined and another had
opportunistically implemented.

However, this is good for OpenGLEAN.  While the OpenGLEAN project
is happy to see freeglut flourish, and the API in question seems
hasty, it is nice to have one more advantage over freeglut.
freeglut's goal as a GLUT drop-in is inherently limiting.  The
OpenGLEAN project is founded on the idea that the essence or core
of the GLUT API is worthy of advancement, and that freeglut is
ultimately and willfully slating itself for obsolescence.  So,
changes that relegate freeglut to the closet and OpenGLEAN to active
use are better than those that make no distinction between the
libraries or, worse, promote freeglut in some people's eyes.

Ultimately, I believe that the added functionality to OpenGLEAN
will be an inducement to use OpenGLEAN.


In other news:

 * As splitting the satellites from the core continues, I found it
   desirable to create another gleanshapes "release" (though I see
   no immediate need to post a file release).  As it is expected
   to remain relatively stable until OpenGLEAN 1.0, at which point
   I'd like to create 1.0 releases of all sub-projects, I thought
   to call it 0.2, release candidate 1.  Due to a little bit of
   sloppiness, it became 0.2.1, instead.  (There never was, nor
   now will be, a 0.2 gleanshapes.)

 * OpenGLEAN 0.5 has some font prototypes that should have
     #ifndef GLEANFONTS_H
   around them.  This will be fixed in the next release of OpenGLEAN,
   but will cause some pain if you try to build the gleanfonts
   demos from CVS.  I expect that the first real gleanfonts release
   will come at about the same time as the next OpenGLEAN update,
   though, so no worries if you're waiting on a file release.

 * The joystick support (possibly with other devices glommed into
   the same release) is next on the list, as gleanfonts appears to
   be shaping up nicely.  When that is completed, the biggest thing
   to do before OpenGLEAN 1.0 will probably be splitting out the
   gamemode support into component features.

OpenGLEAN 1.0 is getting closer.


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/