[SDL] SDL 1.3 and Menus

[necronology at cox.net]

I think you are pretty of like mind to most people here with some twists here and some six of one and half of a dozen there. The libs at the SDL website are pretty good and at least one of the is made in part by Sam (SDL Sam). I'm happy to take what they did and change it to suit my app and make it my own. The libs cover so much on so many topics that I for one don't even see the point of making the focus of SDL so broad as to include those things in SDL proper.


---- julien CLEMENT <clementj2005 at yahoo.fr> wrote: 

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Hi all,

This is only to bring my personal opinion about the idea of Menus in SDL.
Since the beginning it is clear that it is a "Simple" direct media layer. To my mind, it means both simplicity of usage, the API is quite straightforward (I don't want to revive past discussions about changes on the SDL API), and a limited function set. The philosophy is more to bring about a stable core, and create add on libraries appart.
Indeed, it'd be quite annoying to impose, for instance, a specific widget system on SDL.
Also, if I take the case of SDL_image, maybe the most used SDL "add-on", although it is a very quality library, if one wants to read only bitmaps so why imposing all the decoding functions in the core of SDL ?
So, to conclude, there're libraries having a "all in one" philosophy like Allegro, with a built-in GUI system, and a lot of built-in stuff. I'm not condemning this choice, just highlighting the fact that, until now (I dont know what's planned for the next major), it is not the philosophy of SDL to be a "all in one" library.

I'm interested in other's opinion about that. I hope I'm not out of topic ! :D

Regards,
Julien.