SDL/ParaGUI Development Progress

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Hello Xconquerors,

   Yesterday I was able to hook ParaGUI into Xconq's configure/make 
process, and the SDL interface now links with the ParaGUI library under 
both Linux and Windows. I will likely begin the next stage this 
afternoon; that stage is to actually hook ParaGUI objects and methods 
into the SDL interface code.

   In the process of hooking up ParaGUI, I decided to slightly modify 
one of the files included in the 'paragui_1.0.4_setup.exe' that I 
released last week. The new file is available in the usual location:
   http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net
down near the bottom of the page. As mentioned previously, this 
installer is only useful to Windows developers and others who wish to 
build from sources, and it is made with the MinGW32 tools in mind.

   I will shortly be adding links to the other components required for 
ParaGUI development to the downloads page.

   You might also notice that a new file is available for download. This 
is 'paragui-tests.exe'. It contains all of the programs that compiled 
under the 'test' directory of the ParaGUI sources. This is a 
self-extracting archive (I finally found a good excuse to try out 
7-Zip's self-extractor (not to mention the wicked LZMA compression)[1]). 
This file is intended for _anyone_ (not just developers) who is 
interested in some of the things that one can do with SDL and ParaGUI. I 
recommend the 'paratest.exe' and 'windowtest.exe' programs in 
particular, but all of them are worth a look (except 'writetest.exe' 
which doesn't have anything to see).
   And a note to any concerned parties: only 3 DLL's need to be 
distributed with SDL/ParaGUI apps: 'SDL.dll', 'freetype6.dll', and 
'zlib1.dll', and these are all small. Thus the payload of the Xconq 
Windows installers will not significantly increase.
   And, for those wondering about the .zip and .xml files in the 
'paragui-tests' folder, I will explain. The .zip files contain ParaGUI 
themes. ParaGUI is capable of navigating in .zip files (by use of a 
component known as PhysFS). Each of these .zip files contains a folder 
with GUI component images as .bmp or .png files, and a XML file, which 
is used to describe the theme (background images, component images, 
color blending, etc...). Those wishing to make their own themes might do 
well to take a look at these files. The XML files in the 'paragui-tests' 
directory describe screen layouts. ParaGUI can read these layouts to 
automatically set up screens. Of course, the screens can also be 
generated line-by-line from code. (Technical note: ParaGUI uses an Expat 
implementation to parse the XML files.)

   Enjoy,
     Eric

[1] The Windows installers that I distribute also use LZMA compression. 
NSIS 2 supports that compression type, and in comparisons I have always 
found it to be superior to others, including the Burrows-Wheeler 
Transform block-sorting of bzip2.