[SDL] SDL 1.3 and rendering API state management

[David Olofson]

On Sunday 03 September 2006 19:17, Torsten Giebl wrote:
> Hello !
> 
> 
> > Doesn't feel quite right to bypass everything, including display
> > setup, but then again, if the renderer "plugin" API is made
> > public, you can basically just rip that code from SDL. Not exactly
> > megabytes of code anyway! :-)
> >
> > The advantages seem to be major ones, though - and it solves the
> > SDL 2D vs external renderer "extension" conflicts in a clean and
> > potentially very efficient way. (No extra cost for mixing SDL 2D
> > and "extended" calls, as both are wired to the same renderer.)
> 
> 
> How does this work ?
> 
> The coder hast copy&paste the renderers from 1.3 ? Always ?

No, only if you're going to do "backend stuff". Normal applications 
and other code that uses the SDL API (or plugin extensions to it) are 
not affected by this.

When using the SDL API, you aren't really supposed to be using OpenGL, 
Direct3D or whatever the SDL rendererer is using, directly. You're 
supposed to use the SDL API.

Now, if you want to extend SDL - add more rendering operations, add 
support for another target (QuickDraw, Pixomatic, some odd console 
chipset, ...) - you're in backend land. You're effectively messing 
with the internal operation of SDL as a side effect of (ab)using the 
same target context that the SDL renderer is using.

It's really not very different from the situation with SDL 1.2 and 
OpenGL: If you want to do OpenGL rendering, you have to do all of it 
yourself. (Well, except for setting up the display.) As you set up 
the display for OpenGL rendering, the SDL 2D API is rendered unusable 
on the display surface. To bring it back to life, you need to slap 
glSDL/wrapper in between the application and SDL.

What glSDL/wrapper does is essentially what an SDL 1.3 renderer does: 
It implements the SDL 2D rendering API over OpenGL, so that the 
application can still use the SDL 2D calls. The only difference is 
that glSDL does it compile time be means of a bunch of messy 
redefinitions, whereas an SDL 1.3 renderer fills in a struct with a 
bunch of low level functions at run time.


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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