Re: [Plib-devel] Release 1.8.5....and a glimpse of the future.

[Steve B. <st...@sj...>]

Jan Reucker wrote:
> Am Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:29:36 -0600 schrieb Steve Baker <st...@sj...>:
> 
>>> but rewriting all the GUI code would be impossible. And I'm quite happy
>>> with it, so why change it? I hope that we still can get a PLIB-1.8.x
>>> release every now and then even after PLIB-2.0 is born, just in case bad
>>> bugs have been fixed.
>> The reason to change is that OpenGL is changing.
> 
> I never questioned a general rewrite of SSG. I was only talking for my own
> PLIB application which will happily live with 1.8.x as long as there's a
> GFX card driver that supports the current OpenGL features.

Well, 1.8.x will be around for as long as anyone wants to maintain it. 
Who knows how long that will be?  I stopped working on it two years 
ago..but other people are still adding stuff.  It's hard to predict how 
long it would continue.  SourceForge will presumably keep the servers 
running indefinitely.

> I also support the idea of switching to OpenAL. Just one question: Does OpenAL
> support audio input?

Yes - it does...but the Linux version is a few rev levels behind the 
latest - so it's possible that Linux doesn't have it yet...but it will.

> This is a feature found in only a few portable audio
> libraries (e.g. in PortAudio), and I think it's a valuable feature (CRRCsim
> uses PortAudio to sample PPM signals from r/c transmitters; and just think
> of the Nintendo DS, where many great games make use of the built-in mic).

Yep.

> Another feature I really missed in 1.8.x was proper full-screen support in
> PW. But I guess there's no need to rewrite PW to work with the new PLIB.

Agreed - PW is one of the few things I don't want to rewrite - although 
we might want to think about how to integrate screen-based rendering 
contexts with other render targets into something more coherent...I 
suspect that's something we'll get a clearer idea of when OpenGL 3.0 (or 
whatever) finally surfaces.  But adding stuff like true full-screen 
support is something we can do at any time.