[SDL] SDL weakness (...) and Kobo Deluxe sub-projects

[Alexandre Courbot]

> Why? It's important to realize that glSDL is a source level wrapper. You 
> should *not* use any of the glSDL_* calls explicitly, but rather just 
> include glSDL.h instead of SDL.h and recompile. Exceptions:

Mmmm, actually I've just gave it another try with Kobo Deluxe and SDL
CVS source, I just can't get anything to work now! Either it
hard-crashes, either I just get white squares on the screen. Feel free
to contact me privately if you want me to perform some tests.

> > Anyway, such a target is very interesting: why
> > not trying to tune it and include it into the main SDL tree?
> 
> That's the idea. I'm just too busy hacking other stuff in Kobo Deluxe, 
> takeing care of my two sons (got another one 20020211) and other stuff, 
> and so far, I know of only one active glSDL user - although one who 
> *does* send bug reports and fixes every now and then. :-)

Oh, congrats! ;) I'm sure such a target would be usefull (and
considering the latest discussions it looks like I'm not the only one,
hopefully! :)) There were especially an interesting thread with Dirk
Gerrits and Joseph Carter about the possible implementation, but nothing
you are not aware of, I guess.

> Well, you just about listed the major motivations behind glSDL. Indeed, 
> there *are* performance issues that are practically impossible to avoid 
> without changing the SDL API slightly - but most SDL applications should 
> get the full performance boost with few, if any changes. (The idea is 
> that th final version should be an SDL backend, so it *better* allow 
> applications to at least *run* without even recompiling...)

Maybe it would be worth to take these elements into account when
designing SDL 1.3 API.

> Anyway, the fact than SDL relies on OpenGL for 3D has very little to do 
> with the 2D part. You don't even have to compile the OpenGL support in, 
> or have OpenGL to use the current 2D stuff! Thus, SDL cannot depend on it 
> internally. And there are still many systems out there with no OpenGL 
> support, or flaky OpenGL support that isn't really usable for 2D 
> acceleration.

Right, of course. There is no reason to make SDL depend on OpenGL. But
anyway, none of the backends is mandatory when compiling SDL, so the
OpenGL one shouldn't neither.

> Well, if you look at the glSDL code, you'll realize that maybe it's not 
> *that* easy. :-)

Hehe :) Haven't looked yet, I admit. I lack time and am far from being
an OpenGL guru! ;)

> But OTOH, I've already solved most of the problems that can be solved 
> without API changes, so... I'm planning to release Kobo Deluxe 0.4 soon, 
> and after that, I'll look into cleaning up the source some more, and more 
> interestingly, splitting the "internal sub-projects" off, to live their 
> own lives.

Excellent idea. There are some very interesting pieces of code in the
stuff you listed below.

Alex.
-- 
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