Re: [Alephmodular-devel] Platform-independence structure (was: Developer Rant #1 :) )

[Woody Z. I. <woo...@sb...>]

On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 09:38  PM, Br'fin wrote:

> A1 has far more things "in parallel" than it should. I don't agree with 
> you, Woody, on which things should be shared.

I hope some of your next messages illuminate what you have in mind, 
then... I am beginning to suspect I just misunderstand what you're 
thinking and that's why things don't seem to be making sense.  In any 
event, I think I've made my points many times over, and if they're not 
compelling for you, then you obviously have some reasons.  :)  But what 
are they?

> But I agree that A1 proper doesn't share enough. I applaud you and 
> whoever else managed to get SDL working with A1. The basic code only 
> has some nods towards cross-platform issues.

I can't really take much (if any) credit for that stuff.  I tend to 
deflect it to Christian Bauer, whom I gather did quite a bit, but even 
then he might not have acted alone - I don't know.

> SDL may or may not be appropriate within AM based tools. Mostly it 
> would depend on how nicely it can play with others.

I concede that picturing SDL in a traditional application environment 
(like an editor) kind of gives me the willies - shades of like an MS-DOS 
painting program or something.  <<shudder>>  :)  SDL might serve as a 
"buffer provider" into which the software renderer draws while playing a 
game, but something else fills that role (through the same higher-level 
code interface from the renderer's viewpoint of course) in a traditional 
app.

The traditional app strikes me as more likely to be platform-specific, 
anyway (probably Cocoa, and if anyone asks why, then they probably 
haven't worked in Cocoa ;) ).  Though there are cross-platform 
general-purpose UI widget toolkits, I'm not sure I've encountered any 
that really get the "look and feel" right (especially on a 
detail-oriented platform like the Mac).  But I am by no means an 
authority on cross-platform UI widget toolkits.  :)

Woody