From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 13815 invoked by alias); 14 Nov 2004 22:31:36 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 13781 invoked from network); 14 Nov 2004 22:31:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO rwcrmhc13.comcast.net) (204.127.198.39) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 14 Nov 2004 22:31:30 -0000 Received: from [192.168.181.128] (unknown[67.176.41.158](misconfigured sender)) by comcast.net (rwcrmhc13) with ESMTP id <2004111422312901500dkqqfe>; Sun, 14 Nov 2004 22:31:29 +0000 Message-ID: <4197DCB3.7090707@phy.cmich.edu> Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 20:16:00 -0000 From: Eric McDonald User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: xconq7 Subject: SDL/ParaGUI Development Progress Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2004/txt/msg01412.txt.bz2 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.