Re: [Alephmodular-devel] 0.3 Progress update... ints done

[Nick R. <nr...@nt...>]

Br'fin wrote:

>>
>> What about making the Carbon build OS 9 compatible? I know of dozens  
>> of apps that have "fat carbon" versions that run equally well on OS 
>> X  and OS 9.
>
>
> Unfortunately it comes down to the same problem. I, personally, only  
> have the ability to compile Mach-O binaries for MacOS X. Project  
> Builder doesn't appear to be able to create applications that can run  
> as "fat carbon" applications.
>
> If we could find someone to maintain builds for MacOS 9 then we could  
> debate with them whether it uses all the classic APIs or uses Carbon  
> APIs in all the applicable spots.
>
> Right now it's simply out of my hands. :/
>
> -Jeremy Parsons


How about just having OS X support for now, but when it's modular enough 
to have support for any OS, add OS 9 support (in the same way you might 
add Win32 support). Am I right in thinking that you're aiming for a 
setup where you have support for any number of systems, not just Mac & 
SDL? I have suspicions that SDL is somewhat flaky in Windows, and using 
the Windows API instead of SDL is a better option (if there's someone to 
maintain it), although I could easily be wrong.

On another topic, thought I'd mention the GUI issue (only just joined 
the list so I missed the discussion). I think that at some point in the 
future, it would be nice to have a separate graphics module with a layer 
of abstraction, so that we can write a custom GUI not limited to any one 
OS/graphics API (as is the case in A1 now), and no matter what system 
someone runs AM on, they'll have the same interface.

I've experimented with my own custom GUI (admittedly it used only 
OpenGL, but it ran on windows & mac), and it's not the easiest of tasks, 
especially as I allowed widgets to contain widgets which contain widgets 
etc... A custom GUI is much more suitable for a game, but it'll only be 
worth it if it's powerful enough, as people seem to prefer A1's mac 
dialogs to the SDL dialogs...

Nick.