Progress with ParaGUI

Progress with ParaGUI

[Eric McDonald]

Hello Xconq Developers,

   I am making good progress in preparing Xconq to use the ParaGUI 
toolkit for the SDL interface. The Linux side of things is essentially 
taken care of; I have already made RPM packages for ParaGUI. Most of the 
Windows preparation went pretty smoothly. I have had to fight a few 
compilation issues here and there, but I think that things are almost 
taken care of. I will try to finish up that battle later today so that I 
can go ahead and create a Windows installer for the ParaGUI libraries 
and headers (for developers and others who are interested in building 
the soon-to-be SDL/ParaGUI interface from sources). I have already 
documented where existing Windows installers for the various ParaGUI 
dependencies can be found (and the recommended way to use them), and I 
will make that document available later today after I get some sleep.

   Regular players and game designers should not notice much change with 
the SDL interface, at least not until next weekend.

   Regards,
     Eric

Re: Progress with ParaGUI

[D. Cooper Stevenson]

Dear Eric,

Your SDL progress is really tops; canning the SDL library installation process 
is no mean feat. this is because once you have the ParaGUI setup "canned" for 
the platforms then the rest is history; an application designer need only 
think about the SDL interface when designing for Xconq.

Noteably, This helps confirm what I had suspected regarding the "noise level" 
this last week: it was quiet because we all had our heads down working!

I will create a setup document as soon as the tarball is out of the oven.

Note to Elijah: please consider warming up the controls on your "publicity 
engine" over the next couple of weeks as it looks like we're making good 
progress at least three fronts: SDL, graphics, and GIS. If there's anything 
you need here, please let me know. Don't worry about bandwidth; I have it 
covered. 

Also, would you please send Gpeterz an email on my behalf and let him know 
that I think his unit portrait artwork is excellent?

In short, when I think about the progress we're making it makes me shake my 
head a little and thing, "it's a good thing." This is sweet, Eric!


-Coop

On Sunday 07 November 2004 08:29, Eric McDonald wrote:
> Hello Xconq Developers,
>
>    I am making good progress in preparing Xconq to use the ParaGUI
> toolkit for the SDL interface. The Linux side of things is essentially
> taken care of; I have already made RPM packages for ParaGUI. Most of the
> Windows preparation went pretty smoothly. I have had to fight a few
> compilation issues here and there, but I think that things are almost
> taken care of. I will try to finish up that battle later today so that I
> can go ahead and create a Windows installer for the ParaGUI libraries
> and headers (for developers and others who are interested in building
> the soon-to-be SDL/ParaGUI interface from sources). I have already
> documented where existing Windows installers for the various ParaGUI
> dependencies can be found (and the recommended way to use them), and I
> will make that document available later today after I get some sleep.
>
>    Regular players and game designers should not notice much change with
> the SDL interface, at least not until next weekend.
>
>    Regards,
>      Eric

Re: Progress with ParaGUI

[Eric McDonald]

Hi Coop,

D. Cooper Stevenson wrote:

> Your SDL progress is really tops; canning the SDL library installation process 
> is no mean feat. 

On Windows, at least. It was already pretty much done for me wrt RPM 
packages; the spec files were already there and so it was trivial to 
create the packages.

> I will create a setup document as soon as the tarball is out of the oven.

As far as the RPM packages go, it is just the usual: "rpm -ivh" or "rpm 
-Uvh", as appropriate. I will upload the source and i586 binary packages 
later on today, if all goes well.

For Windows, I've been making some light documentation as I go along, 
and it looks something like this (though more detail could be filled in):

GnuWin32 Glibc Installation
(1) Download Glibc setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libgw32c.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path from "C:\Program 
Files\GnuWin32" to wherever
you have installed MinGW32 (typically "C:\Mingw"). Note that the 
GnuWin32 stuff meshes
harmlessly (at least on the face of things) with the MinGW32 stuff; this 
is not
particularly surprising, since both are native Win32 libs with 
non-conflicting names, and
which have compatible directory structures.

Zlib Installation
(1) Download Zlib setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zlib.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path as above (in the Glibc 
instructions),
if necessary.

Libpng Installation
(1) Download Libpng setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libpng.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path as above (in the Glibc 
instructions),
if necessary.

Freetype Installation
(1) Download Freetype setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/freetype.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path as above (in the Glibc 
instructions),
if necessary.
(3) Find the 'freetype2' directory in your 'include' directory. Move the
'freetype' subdirectory of the 'freetype2' directory up one level so 
that it is in the
'include' directory. Make sure that the 'freetype2' directory is empty, 
and then
delete it.

SDL_Image is not necessary at this time.
Expat can be (and is, if you use the forthcoming ParaGUI installer) part 
of ParaGUI's internal
implementation.
OpenGL is not necessary at this time.


I also recorded some notes regarding ParaGUI building, but it is a bit 
of a mess. And, of course, the MinGW32 sections of the 
'doc/INSTALL-win.txt' document are highly relevant, since I have already 
provided some notes regarding the setup of MinGW32 and SDL. I will 
provide an installer for the ParaGUI libs and headers, so that folks 
don't have to play around with the build process like I did.

> In short, when I think about the progress we're making it makes me shake my 
> head a little and thing, "it's a good thing." This is sweet, Eric!

Thanks. In spite of all the fights I had with the linker (is it just me, 
or are "libtoolized" builds almost always more of a hindrance than a 
help?), I have now successfully built ParaGUI under MinGW32. All that 
remains is just to package it up in a Windows installer, __my next step.

I am very optimistic about the choice of using ParaGUI for the SDL 
interface, especially now that I played around with some of the ParaGUI 
test/example programs this afternoon. I think things are going to work 
out quite well....

Eric

P.S. I am going to try to have a fresh source tarball and Windows 
installer for Xconq available this evening. I have to take care of some 
ANSI C++ build issues under MinGW32 first. When ready, this will 
probably be the last prerelease not to have ParaGUI hooked in.

Re: Progress with ParaGUI

[Eric McDonald]

Eric McDonald wrote:

> Thanks. In spite of all the fights I had with the linker (is it just me, 
> or are "libtoolized" builds almost always more of a hindrance than a 
> help?), I have now successfully built ParaGUI under MinGW32. All that 
> remains is just to package it up in a Windows installer, __my next step.

There is going to be a delay. I just had a rather serious mishap with 
the uninstaller. Don't ask.

Eric

GIS Update [Was: Re: Progress with ParaGUI]

[D. Cooper Stevenson]

On Monday 08 November 2004 03:03, Eric McDonald wrote:
> There is going to be a delay. I just had a rather serious mishap with
> the uninstaller. Don't ask.

That's the worst! :)

Hopefully, I can take out a little of the sting by letting you know that I've 
made good progress with the GIS -> Xconq import scipt. 

Here's the original landcover image I'm working with (review again):

  http://wiki.xconqgis.org/images/grass_tutorial/screen12.jpg

Here's what I have currently in Xconq:

  http://wiki.xconqgis.org/images/gis_to_xconq.jpg

You can discern the similarities. Everything looks shifted to the right and 
leaning as Xconq uses the Cartesian oblique coordinate system; I must 
translate the ascii source file before I write the Xconq terrain file.

It's important to note that the Xconq map was automatically created 
exclusively with my script.  I speculate that I may someday have a "map 
making" web interface. You should be able to simply enter the lat/long of 
your desired map along with the desired grid size and get the Xconq terrain 
map and image out.

Kind of like an Xconq map vending machine.

Documentation/script here (edit the page text to have the script display 
correctly):

  http://wiki.xconqgis.org/admin.php?CreatingTerrainScript


-Coop

Re: GIS Update [Was: Re: Progress with ParaGUI]

[Eric McDonald]

D. Cooper Stevenson wrote:

>>There is going to be a delay. I just had a rather serious mishap with
>>the uninstaller. Don't ask.
> 
> 
> That's the worst! :)

Well, if I had shipped the installer without testing the uninstaller, 
then things could have been much worse. There would have been a lynch 
mob formed out of any MinGW32 users who had used the uninstaller.

I copied the installer script that I made for Xconq, and edited it for 
ParaGUI. Problem is that I forgot to remove:
   RMDir /r $INSTPATH
and with the ParaGUI installer, the default install path is "C:\MinGW" 
rather than, say, "C:\Program Files\Xconq".

Fortunately, I still had all the installer and tarballs for my MinGW32 
installation on hand, and so I was able to reverse the damage in about 
45 minutes after the "incident". But then, I decided to go to bed.

> Here's the original landcover image I'm working with (review again):
> 
>   http://wiki.xconqgis.org/images/grass_tutorial/screen12.jpg
> 
> Here's what I have currently in Xconq:
> 
>   http://wiki.xconqgis.org/images/gis_to_xconq.jpg

That definitely looks like progress. Good work.

> It's important to note that the Xconq map was automatically created 
> exclusively with my script.  

This is good.

> Kind of like an Xconq map vending machine.

:-)

> Documentation/script here (edit the page text to have the script display 
> correctly):
> 
>   http://wiki.xconqgis.org/admin.php?CreatingTerrainScript

FYI, it is asking for an username/password. Might make things difficult 
to view for those who don't have edit privs....

   Regards,
      Eric

Re: Progress with ParaGUI

[Tom Low-Shang]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 01:29:30AM -0700, Eric McDonald wrote:
> Hello Xconq Developers,
> 
>   I am making good progress in preparing Xconq to use the ParaGUI 
> toolkit for the SDL interface. The Linux side of things is essentially 
> taken care of; I have already made RPM packages for ParaGUI.

Debian has packages in testing and unstable branches for paragui
1.0.4. Will this version be sufficient for xconq?

-- 
Tom Low-Shang           \ Toronto, Canada
Software Developer      / 416 321 1394
* Embedded Systems      \ tlow@low-shang.homelinux.com
* Industrial Automation /

Re: Progress with ParaGUI

[Eric McDonald]

Tom Low-Shang wrote:
>>  I am making good progress in preparing Xconq to use the ParaGUI 
>>toolkit for the SDL interface. The Linux side of things is essentially 
>>taken care of; I have already made RPM packages for ParaGUI.
> 
> Debian has packages in testing and unstable branches for paragui
> 1.0.4. Will this version be sufficient for xconq?

Yes. 1.0.4 is the latest stable version of that toolkit, and is, in 
fact, what I am planning on building the Xconq SDL interface against. 
There is too much change taking place in their development branch 
(currently at version 1.1.8).

   Regards,
     Eric