[SDL] Mouse wheel in SDL??

[Jason Hoffoss]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Olofson" <david.olofson at reologica.se>
To: <sdl at libsdl.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 5:59 PM
Subject: Re: [SDL] Mouse wheel in SDL??


> On Tuesday 12 March 2002 23:10, Jason Hoffoss wrote:
> [...]
> > > That's just because we don't want to force people to upgrade half
> > > their system every two seconds.
> >
> > X has already been upgrade now how many times since this hack was first
> > introduced?  Probably quite a few now.
>
> That has nothing to do with it, whatsoever. The reason you can't just
> change that kind of things is that it would break all applications that
> use it, forcing users to upgrade them, hack them, replace them or just
> accept that the feature doesn't work.

No no, haven't you heard of backward's compatibility?  You write a new API
function, and then document it as the proper API function to use, and
document the API functions it replaces as obsolete.  The old API would still
be supported, but *new* applicates shouldn't be written to use the old API.
They should use the new API.  Then at some point down the road, if/when old
applicates have been upgraded naturally (shouldn't there be a new release at
least every 5 years or so?  That doesn't like it's asking too much to me)
you can change the old functions from obsolete to being phased out, and
finally remove them even further down the road.  If you handle it correctly,
no application would ever break.

> I have to agree here. I'd guess the reason is lack of resource, weak
> management, or both. It's hard to avoid without paying programmers to
> deal with the less exciting tasks - one of the few real problems with
> Free/Open Source development. Some projects still solve this nicely,
> while others fail...

I think another part of it is the attitude of things must be "supported by
all" or none of them.  Why can't you take advantage of features that are on
some systems but not others?  Instead some people seem to like forcing
everyone to the same common denominator.  Even SDL has a little of this.
SDL_GetTicks() could use higher resolution timers if they exist rather than
just holding to 10ms resolution.  I think this issue is the biggest reason
why Linux isn't as good a gaming platform as Windows is.  I think people are
moving away from this attitude more these days, though, which is good.  If
you've got it, use it.  We still wouldn't have accelerated 3d in Linux if
the attitude wasn't changing probably.  Of course, I still can't get it
working under Linux, so setup still needs some work if you ask me.

> Yeah... I don't know what the XFree86 guys were thinking, but at least, I
> try to keep this problem in mind when I'm designing stuff - even though
> it *does* increase the risk of a project dying before the beta stage.

Oh?  Why's that?  Do you find it makes developement take longer or
something?

   -Jason