[SDL] Follow up (more details, test results, replies)

[Scott Harper]

On Apr 18, 2007, at 12:54 AM, Scott Harper wrote:

>
> On Apr 17, 2007, at 9:25 PM, Leon Marrick wrote:
>
>>                     For starters, I didn't explain why using OpenGL
>> ...snip
> ...snip
> The only suggestion, which I hope you will take as an apology for
> what has probably been a rather blunt and perhaps a bit offensive-
> sounding (though I assure you none was intended) email is that you
> may be able to save yourself some time in drawing at the expense of
> memory.  You could pre/cache the text you need drawn, once drawn the
> first time, into images stored in memory.  That way when you need to
> redraw the text, you can simply draw the cached image without need to
> redraw every last character every frame, and I think that could save
> you some time between frames.  Though your initial draw may well take
> as much time as every redraw you're doing now.  I'm not an expert at
> this as I've said before.  I generally use OpenGL, and have SDL as my
> backend for user input, sound, and simply setting up a drawing area
> for my projects.

I have to apologize.  I just re-read your first post, and you said  
you already tried pre-rendering.

Sorry I couldn't offer something more helpful.

I am curious, however, who you expect your users to be in that they  
won't know OpenGL?  I was under the impression that most anyone  
involved in graphics programming needed to have at least a  
rudimentary understanding of OpenGL or Direct3D, and thus OpenGL  
would not be an insurmountable obstacle in the realm of graphics  
project source code?  Please forgive my ignorance if I am mistaken,  
however.

-- Scott