Various issues with jedi-sdl going 1.0

**michalis** · 12-10-2006, 02:04 AM

Yesterday I noticed that I didn't receive any of the latest jedi-sdl mailing list mails. Seems like yahoo doesn't like my email address. Also sending email to the jedi-sdl mailing list seems to not work from my address... So I post here on the forums a couple of my notes and reminders related to jedi-sdl going to 1.0.

1. As for the question in "Gearing up for v1.0 final release..." thread about OpenAL:

Sure OpenAL does work under Linux and FreeBSD. OpenAL headers for FPC are available from various places: my game engine http://www.camelot.homedns.org/~mich...ame_engine.php, FPC trunk sources (see packages/extra/openal/). There's also http://www.noeska.com/doal/, although I never tested their unit.

Honestly, I wouldn't advice including OpenAL unit into jedi-sdl. Because OpenAL is not a part of SDL. Jedi-sdl already includes a lot of unrelated headers, why should we include another one ? Besides, this makes jedi-sdl partially duplicating work of FPC, that already includes a lot of headers. I would prefer to use OpenAL header from FPC than the one from jedi-sdl.

But, anyway, if you still want to include OpenAL inside jedi-sdl, now you know some places from where to get it

2. Before 1.0 release, someone should take a shot at issues submitted to sourceforge trackers. Some time ago I investigated some of them, see next points.

3. Remember my mail http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/J...L/message/4058 :

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Here's a patch that fixes SDLMonoFonts.pas to handle UNIX and Mac line endings correctly: http://www.camelot.homedns.org/~mich...onofonts.patch.

I did this while investigating https://sourceforge.net/tracker/inde...05&atid=437444, see comments there. I guess that you can set this request to pending now and have it closed if noone will be able to reproduce this bug anymore.

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The patch is still waiting to be applied

4. Remember my mail http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/J...L/message/4059. I'll repeat the relevant parts here:

- SDL/Pas/Readme.txt should be removed from the JEDI-SDL repository, it's a leftover from old OpenGL unit from Mike Lishke that JEDI-SDL used to contain. So this Readme.txt is not relevant anymore, remove it.

- I always wanted to ask: what's the purpose of all those *.dll.a files in the repository ?

- I looked at two submitted patches on sourceforge trackers ("[ 1243669 ] sdlsprites patch" and "[ 1243671 ] Oxygene patch needed because of changed sdlsprites.pas") and they definitely look sensible, I would apply them.

5. Finally, a small thing: How about adding a link to http://www.freepascal.org/wiki/index.php/FPC_and_SDL somewhere from JEDI-SDL main page ?

**cragwolf** · 12-10-2006, 08:01 AM

I agree, I agree, I agree. OpenAL should be kept seperate. In fact, I think OpenGL should also be kept seperate. I think there's too much bloat in JEDI-SDL. But I understand the desire by many to make it a cross-platform game development library. But then it should be renamed.

**WILL** · 12-10-2006, 08:22 AM

:scratch: Yeah... I'd have to agree with you guys about not adding OpenAL. I use Noeska's OpenAL headers and I like 'em just fine. If I want to use SDL then I use JEDI-SDL. Best if we keep the two seperate.

The issue of OpenGL however is a bit cloudy to me though. SDL it's self makes use of OpenGL does it not? I mean it's a basic functionality of the standard SDL API, am I right?

If that is the case then supporting that functionality would make sense, but taking it further would, I think, only confuse the direction of the JEDI-SDL library in supporting the SDL API it's self.

As far as the rest goes though, I like the fact that there is an sdlutils unit that extends what function calls we get from the standard SDL dll/so. I think that extending it to have all the useful drawing and surface functions is an important task too. Game developers will automatically look for these things in ALL their graphics libraries so it's sort of a 'must' of sorts.

**grudzio** · 12-10-2006, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by cragwolf

In fact, I think OpenGL should also be kept seperate. I think there's too much bloat in JEDI-SDL. But I understand the desire by many to make it a cross-platform game development library. But then it should be renamed.

Generally I agree. The only problem I have that the SDL GL headers are the only ones that work onder Windows and Linux and are up to date.
(I have tried FPC and DGL units)

Maybe SDL should be divided in two separate packages - the core SDL containing only SDL related headers and something like SDL AddOns which would contain the additional libraries and sdl wrappers.