[isugamedev-devel] Re: image lib

[Kevin M. <ke...@vr...>]

so... inlined pseudo-COM is good... whew!  I've always kind of had that in 
mind for DLL stuff anyway.  since I like cross platform stuff, C++, and 
since I read the Box book (COM book), I've always assumed that we could write our 
own limited subset of COM...  but have never tried it.. :)  seems like the 
lightest weight, most expressive (C or C++ syntax), most portable 
option...   

  does this meet both of our priorities?

we still haven't settled on using std::io stuff or FILE, std::string stuff or char*

I'm fine with whatever there, as long as the code doesn't get more brittle 
(like if we have to do lots of new and delete).  

NOTE: we can always move the proj from gamedev to a SF.net project.  and 
the name isn't too permanent.  I just wanted to get it up so people could 
use it if they wanted...


Kevin


On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Chad Austin wrote:

> > 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.
> 

-- 
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Kevin Meinert                                  __  _   __  
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