[isugamedev-devel] Re: image lib

[Chad A. <ae...@ae...>]

> can we use our own com-like thing?

Yeah, we could.  COM is a Microsoft-defined ABI (you can write COM objects in VB
and assembly and they will get along just fine because they know exactly how to
communicate).  So if we somehow guaranteed a COM-compatible ABI (or at least
something similar), we'd be okay.

> as i understand COM, all you need is:
> 
> - abstract interface
> - implementations for that interface
> - factory to give you those implementations
> - keep the interface the same (don't change it or you'll break bin
>   compatibility)
> 
> this would (hopefully?) let us keep a small foot print, and not depend on
> outside libs (like xpcom, or COM), and avoid the nasty C style OO
> interface that we'd need to convert to.
> 
> I know this works with VC++, but will it port to other compilers?

I believe that all Windows compilers at least support an option for
COM-compatible vtable layouts (it'd be suicide not to support COM), so I guess
that'll work.