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

[Michael A. <mdm...@ya...>]

--- Nick Rolfe <nr...@nt...> wrote:
> 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.

I have been running A1/SDL under Windows for quite
some time and SDL doesn't seem to be a problem. 
Either that or the A1 team wrote the code so well that
I never noticed.  Do you have a specific reason to
think that SDL is flaky on Windows or was that just a
"suspicion"?

> 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.

I have to agree with you on this.  A foundation of
"safe" crossplatform function calls needs to be
established (e.g. anything in ANSI is safe, but not
POSIX), then *everything* is written to those function
calls.  Otherwise, the #ifdef's will never be in sync.
 We all know how much that happened with A1.  We could
write this foundation our selves, but like you said
that can be a very major headache.  Our best bet is to
find a foundation that already exists, with maybe a
few additions of our own for those things that people
just insist on being native (e.g. file dialogs).

Personally, I don't care what foundation is used, just
so long as some foundation is established and used all
the time (no cheating).  You could use MacApp for all
I care!  At least it would eliminate #ifdef poisoning.
 Just to get you started here are some foundations
that I know of: wxWindows <www.wxwindows.org>, FLTK
<www.fltk.org>, PLIB <plib.sourceforge.net> (PUI is
the GUI part), and of course SDL <www.libsdl.org>.

I have to laugh at the irony of my situation. 
Usually, the non-Windows person is the one promoting
crossplatform, but here I am a Win guy promoting
crossplatform to Mac people.  I want to help, but
since I only have a WinXP machine (maybe a GNU/Hurd
soon) I can't help until it's ported.  Porting would
be a big task probobly as much as a full 0.X release
(e.g. 0.4 -> 0.5).  If it is done adhoc then I will
require continual maininance, but if it is ported to a
single foundation that we all agree to use exclusivly,
then the port only needs to be done once and only one
codebase needs to be maintained.

Michael D. Adams
mdm...@ya...



__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com