Re: SDL Interface Development

["D. Cooper Stevenson" <cstevens@gencom.us>]

On Saturday 30 October 2004 22:15, Eric McDonald wrote:

>    Today I was thinking about everything that still needs to be done on
> the SDL interface. 

There's a lot.

>
>    With the help of a powerful scrying tool known as Google, I have
> apparently discovered an easy way out: ParaGUI,
> http://www.bms-austria.com/projects/paragui/

Okay.

>    The price is twofold:
> (1) The ParaGUI API is in C++. This means that Xconq's SDL interface
> would have to be converted to C++ and things going to and from the
> kernel would have to be carefully declared extern "C". 

> (2) ParaGUI has a number of dependencies: Freetype, zlib, libpng, and
> Expat. None of these should be a problem on most modern Linux
> distributions. On Windows, these all are available, thanks in part to
> the Gimp on Win32 project and other reasons. However, any required DLL's
> would have to be bundled with the Windows installer thereby increasing
> its size, perhaps significantly. 

I think the benefits simply outweigh the size concern. I stress that we'll 
need to be disciplined about making Xconq as lean as possible to avoid 
'cruft.'

> Some of the space could probably be won 
> back once we get to a point where the Tcl/Tk interface no longer needs
> to be provided.

Right. 

[snip]

>    A while back ago, we considered SDL_Pango for handling of
> international and exotic text. Pango (which SDL_Pango obviously
> requires) is not without dependencies either. So I think point (2) is
> something worth considering. How much should Xconq be able to stand
> alone? And how much should we cave in to rapid development at the
> expense of raising the hacker "cost of entry", so to speak?

Ideally the SDL GUI builder would compile the SDL code such that only libsdl 
were required for Xconq (save libpng, etc.) If the hacker cost of entry were 
a bit high, I think that's okay if we discipline ourselves, as you outlined, 
to provide Howto documentation to facilitate them. I am willing to commit to 
writing this documentation.

>
>    One last note, I am not saying that moving to ParaGUI is without
> work. Probably a widget would have to be created to contain the main map
> and minimap. But, it looks like we get things like themes (font sets,
> background images and gradients) quite easily, and this is something we
> all wanted from/expect of the interface.

Oh, of course. Their will certainly be bumps. I think that getting some 
interfaces up that really look sharp-even if they are in development-could 
definitely attract quality developers. This irons out bugs quicker and the 
cycle repeats itself by attracting more developers.

In short, the benefits in my view seem to far outweigh any potential negatives 
so long as we are disciplined to adhering to quality quality standards while 
developing the port.


-Coop