Sv: Sv: Future direction of PenguinPlay

["Bjarke Hammersholt Roune" <asmild@post6.tele.dk>]

>>interface better with PPlay. I doubt we'd be able to talk anyone into
>>changing the way they did streams or threads, for example.
>
>With free software the goal is to make the (library|application|game|...)
>as good as possible. Period. If library A can't be used in combination with
>library B, then that's clearly a bug either in A or in B or in both. And
>bugs will be fixed.
>

I think there will be a tendency for people to say "it's the other guys'
fault". Also, perhaps if two ways of threading is incompatible, then
changing the threading in one lib will make it function together with some
other libs, but then maybe there will also be a couple of libs it suddenly
can't work with that it could before.

>>What about 2D/3D graphics? I sure would find it practical to be able to
>>manipulate the surfaces on my 3D objects using the 2D lib. Its kind of an
>>obvious thing that atleast I would take for granted. So, if I want an
effect
>>running both in 2D and 3D surfaces (like a nice fractal water effect), I
>>have to write it twice?
>
>No. you just tell the developers of both libs "Hey, don't you think giving
>the user the possibility to use 2DlibA to directly draw into 3DlibB
>textures would be good?" and they will respond "Hey, you're right! We could
>add some xyz function for that - or perhaps tweak feature abc to allow
>drawing to "foreign" memory. Just look at the code and prepare a patch.".
>If you're lucky they'll even do it themselves.
>
You yourself mentioned how many different possibilities there are when doing
3D. What about all the other 3D libs? Should they maintain converters to be
able to write each of these libs format, in-memory? Especially the way
things are liad out in memory changes often. This isn't suchs a big deal, as
with proper OOP, people using the lib won't notice. However, if you want to
write directly to some 3D libs memory, then you'll have to know exactly how
things are laid out in memory. And you'll have to maintain that piece of
code. And if you've done it for one 3D lib, then, as I said, what about all
the others?

>It essentially all comes down to playing around with the different libs
>(ie. using them in a realistic scenario) and staying in contact with the
>authors.


Perhaps you'r right. I'll want to see it to believe it, though... :)