[SDL] SDL 1.3 roadmap...

[Scott Harper]

On Oct 11, 2007, at 4:18 AM, Sami Näätänen wrote:

> On Wednesday 10 October 2007, Ross Smith wrote:
>> One thing I'd like to know about SDL 1.3: Is it going to finally
>> remove the restriction that SDL functions can only be called from the
>> main thread? SDL's strong orientation to an old-fashioned,
>> single-threaded, event-driven architecture is the reason I'm
>> currently investigating alternative libraries. It's just getting more
>> and more painful trying to reconcile SDL with a heavily multithreaded
>> application.
>>
>> I could live with restricting all SDL calls to a single thread if I
>> had to, if only it didn't have to be the main thread. Is there any
>> prospect of some relief on the horizon?
>
> Well you can make another thread as the main thread. No one is forcing
> you to consider the thread that can access SDL as the main thread.
>
> I think that due to the modern HW SDL should provide more support for
> multithreadded applications. This should be through API calls, so that
> single threaded aplications don't suffer from the support.
>
> I think there are people like you who are much better at answering  
> what
> kind of API that should be.

Forgive my ignorance, but in all my study of games/graphics  
programming (which, while extant is not by any stretch of the  
imagination "comprehensive" or "in-depth") I've not run across a  
situation wherein the qualification that all drawing be performed in  
a single thread would be terribly problematic to design around, if in  
fact any conflict arose at all in the first place.

More simply, I've written multi-threaded programs, and never had to  
deal with even WANTING to draw from another thread.  I've always  
designed my games to gather information for drawing each element  
(which information may be changed in separate threads), and drawing  
it; or elements that require a redraw request it and then the main  
thread gets the request and redraws however is best/

Can you provide an example scenario wherein the ability to draw from  
multiple threads becomes necessary?  I'm still learning, so maybe I  
haven't yet run across it.

Thanks,
-- Scott