Re: Allegro TV!

[salvador <sal...@in...>]

Martijn Versteegh wrote:

> >  Just to say that I was able to generate an experimental version of Turbo
> >Vision on top of Allegro.
> Ha! this is something I tried to do about 2 years ago, but I got tangled up too much
> in turbovision ;-). The problem was I didn't  (want to) know anything about turbovision, I
> just wanted a graphical X-native setedit.

I must admit the easiest part was the TV part ;-), the only problem was that debugging
X-Allegro applications seems to be really tricky, but it was easy.
What I did is a library that provides most of the conio API plus some functions that handles
information in the way that TV likes (screen write passing a buffer with chars/attrs as in
the video memory and my keyboard codes that we use in TV currently)
After it things were really easy.
Now the big problem is that currently low level stuff is a real mess and incorporating it in
a clean way is really hard.

> >  I did the experiment under X in a Linux box.
> >  It means I got a setedit working as a native X application!
> >  The good thing is that Allegro supports Linux console (fbdev, SVGALib, ggi
> >and direct access), X (Linux, Solaris and Irix tested), DOS, Win32 and ports
> >to BeOS, QNX and Mac OS are under work.
>
> Does that mean you could theoretically get all keys right in X?

Currently the best way to get all the keyboard codes is by using a patched Eterm. I put the
sources of Eterm 0.8.10, patches and a Debian Potato package in Source Forge.
Allegro is working nice but it can't handle any key used for accents, I use them and I guess
you also have it. I'm trying to clarify it in the Allegro mailing list.

> Please release it quickly, I'd love to experiment with this one ;-)

Well, as it will generate problems and conflicts in TV I'm releasing TV 1.1.2 *without* it
today and start trying to incorporate it in TV in the next weeks.
I'm really interested in Allegro because it provides a lot of interesting targets (Mac OS,
BeOS and QNX as examples). But I have code from JASC that provides native X support.
Lamentably JASC changed too much things and I preffer to incorporate things more slowly.
My next step will be to release the core of the port: AlCon.
AlCon is the conio like core that runs on top of Allegro. All the limitations and bugs that I
saw can be catched with it, so that's a good start for experiments. The library could also be
of interest for people wanting to port old conio applications.
Today I'll be really busy releasing TV 1.1.2 and synchronizing my CVS with S.F. CVS (I have
around 300 commits to send!)
But I'll announce things in the list (and that's why I'm sending a Cc to the list).

SET

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Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET). (Electronics Engineer)
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