Hans,
On 9/20/06, Hans de Goede <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Laurent Desnogues wrote:
> On 9/19/06, Hans de Goede <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> May I ask why you're writing a layer emulating SDL on top of Xlib, SDL
>> itself actually is a pretty thin layer on top of Xlib itself and it
>> handles a lot of nasty X specific stuff correctly, so what is there to
>> be gained by doing things this way?
>
> My aim is to get a refresh about X11, then learn MAME new OSD.
> Plus building on a working basis is so much easier than having to
> start from Windows code.
>
> Of course at some point it won't make any sense to use this SDL
> stuff anymore, for adding X specific stuffs, such as Xinerama.
>
Besides Xinerama, what other X specific stuff do you want supported? I
know SDL pretty well both from the inside and the outside (xmame has not
been the only emu/game project I've worked on), and although I don't
know if we can use Xinerama from the outside (as you cannot specify the
window position AFAIK, but I might even be wrong there), but I'm sure we
can make SDL Xinerema aware, also helping out many other games in the
process.
What I'm trying to say (very carefully) is that maybe it would be better
to stick with using SDL, SDL allows direct access to quite a few aspects
of Xlib (you can get to the display and window handles), which should
make some exotic features not in SDL possible, and SDL actually is a
quite well written and supported lib making live easier in general.
As said I've been thinking about rewriting xmame before because over
time it has become a bit messy, I've actually concidered using SDL when
I was thinking about a rewrite, but discarded it because I believe an
SDL version could never offer all the features offered in xmame. Now
that I've seen sdlmame however I'm not that sure anymore. And the code
is so much cleaner (still not really clean code, but way better then xmame).
Either way I wish you the best of luck, but I personally think (and
thats an educated guess) that sdlmame is the better path to pursue to
get a great uniXmame. Currently I'm on the point of forking sdlmame (or
rather maintaining a patchset on top of it for features not welcome in
the mainline sdlmame). Maybe we can take sdlmame with my patch and reuse
the xmame name for that? With my patch sdlmame has effects, scalable
windows, etc. making it pretty competetive to xmame 106. Then the X
could stand for eXtended I guess :)
Well, honestly I am all for dropping XMAME in favour of SDLMAME.
Now I have said officially what I used to say privately.
The only problems I see are:
- does SDL support all the backends XMAME supports (for instance
what is the status of DGA in SDL 1.3? what about sound)?
- will Arbee and OG agree on using a source control system shared
between SDLMAME and XMAME dev teams (which would kind of
become the same team)?
The answers to these two questions will drive the decision.
I invite every user of XMAME to give his/her thinking!
Laurent
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