[ZooLib-dev] ZooLib 0.9

[Andrew G. <ag...@em...>]

Hi all,

In the 2 1/2 years since we posted the ZooLib 0.8.1 sources there's 
been a lot of progress:

* Assets, a platform-independent generic resource mechanism.
* A wide array of streams and stream filters.
* Unicode support.
* 'Strims', stream-like interfaces that lets you treat any text as 
unicode.
* File system iteration and manipulation.
* Enhanced networking, including support for Open Transport.
* Pixmaps with arbitrary pixel formats.
* Carbon support on MacOS X and MacOS Classic.
* Support for mach-o and the POSIX environment on MacOS X.
* ZBlockStore_PhaseTree, a crash-proof filesystem-in-a-file.
* Doxygen comments on a lot of the code.
* Stream-based encoding and decoding of PNG, GIF and JPEG images.
* Binary and textual import and export of tuples.

... and a lot of general spit and polish.

We started using sourceforge's cvs repository for ZooLib about a year 
ago, but it still bugged me that the packaged source was so out of 
date. So a few days ago I posted a snapshot on sourceforge as ZooLib 
0.9.

Some areas of ZooLib are now, I think, very strong. Comprehensive and 
consistent across four or five operating systems. However some areas 
remain weak, usually features I haven't needed for my own work. I'm 
thinking in particular of X11's complete lack of support for menus or 
text entry, and fully embracing Carbon. The full list of what I think 
needs doing and how important it seems is in the TODO.html file in 
zoolib's root directory. Let me know what you think.

If you haven't subscribed to the CVS checkins mailing list but you're 
still interested in ZooLib then you're missing out :) To sign up, visit
   <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/zoolib-checkins>.

And if this message prompts you to grab the 0.9 code, why not forgo 
that step and simply grab the source out of CVS (there's a couple of 
bug fixes checked in already).
First log into to the repository, hit return when prompted for a 
password:
   cvs -d:pserver:ano...@cv...:/cvsroot/zoolib login
Then check out the top-level directory:
   cvs -z3 -d:pserver:ano...@cv...:/cvsroot/zoolib co zoolib

I'm currently revisiting the low-level graphics code and event 
handling, in support of X11 and other work. I'm expecting that it will 
simplify a lot of the platform-specific code. It's always been my 
contention that ZooLib is emminently port-able, and I'd be interested 
in hearing if there are OSes or operating environments that ZooLib 
should support, for example QNX or QTopia.

Regards,
A+
-- 
Andrew Green                           mailto:ag...@em...
Electric Magic Co.           Vox/Fax: +1 (408) 907 2101