Re: [AD] ALLEGRO_FULLSCREEN_WINDOW flag

[Elias P. <eli...@gm...>]

On Sat, 2010-01-23 at 23:22 +0100, Elias Pschernig wrote:
> The attached patch adds a new display flag called
> ALLEGRO_FULLSCREEN_WINDOW which makes al_create_display ignore the
> passed width and height and instead creates a fullscreen window as big
> as the desktop. It's ignored under Windows and OSX for now.
> 

Ok, we discussed this a bit on allegro.cc in the meantime.

The need for both "real fullscreen" and "fake fullscreen" got clear in
the allegro.cc thread I think. According to X-G in Windows it's possible
to have two fullscreen modes with the exact same resolution/refresh
rate/pixel format - but one allows instant alt-tab and additional
monitors keep working, e.g. when you want to have a video or website
running in one. The other mode makes alt-tab take several seconds (even
though the monitor resolution is not changed) and messes with additional
monitors. However the "real fullscreen" may have better performance
(most likely depends on the gfx card).

It means Allegro won't be able to make the decision so we should support
both. (In X11 the situation seems to be the same as Windows, once we
support XRandR a "real fullscreen" and "fake fullscreen" will be quite
different even if the monitor resolution isn't affected.)

With my proposed flag, the user would have to explicitly set the
ALLEGRO_FULLSCREEN_WINDOW to get a "fake fullscreen" mode. The
width/height actually wouldn't be ignored as in my first version of the
patch, but (at least in X11) be passed as window dimensions. When
toggling the window out of fullscreen state it's the size it would get
then. So I think we can't simply use 0/0 to replace the flag as was
suggested.

The attached patch mainly updates the documentation to reflect the
meaning of the initial width/height and also explains the difference to
ALLEGRO_FULLSCREEN in case the same pixel dimension would be passed with
that flag.

-- 
Elias Pschernig <eli...@gm...>