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| Allegro vs SDL |
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Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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Quote: we'll soon have an MSVC project for allegro
SSSSWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTT! Like.. mega sweet :) ....although, the newer WIP's have been pretty unstable compared to 4.0.2. I stopped using 4.1.4 because it couldn't use windowed modes in XP for some reason, among other problems.. :( "He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe" |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: so : decision made
Me and Matthew are just users. Not developers Quote: subscribed to big5 and AD, made a weekly summary and posted it here? Would that be good? I'm thinking something like the weekly sprout on netbeans. I think thats a great idea, then more people might be 'spurred' to join the lists to help things along. AFAICS there really are about (maybe) 4 people working on allegro5, (one of which I hear probably won't be working on allegro4 much anymore), and Those 4 people are working on seperate parts, and slowly note: AFAIK, the developers are doing it for fun. Once it stops being fun, they will stop. like the person I mentioned above... -- |
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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Quote: What if someone (could be me, maybe) subscribed to big5 and AD I was going to suggest that myself actually. I like the PHP Weekly report. I'm not subscribed to any of the PHP dev lists, yet I can feel like I know whats going on. If someone can weekly come up with a similar style report for Allegro, I'd be glad to host / promote it. Yes, I know there are the mailing lists, the archives, the digests - but nothing (except maybe google |
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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Quote: subscribed to big5 and AD, made a weekly summary and posted it here? Would that be good? I'm thinking something like the weekly sprout on netbeans. I could do that for AD. I already read it and it wouldn't be much work most of the time. I don't care enough about the Allegro 5 API yet to subscribe to that - the current API is fine with me and even if Allegro 5 comes out, I may decide to stick with 4. Anyway, a summary of AD since november 25: ----------------- Eric (Botcazou) announced the 4.1.6 WIP on the mailing list and proposed to try for 4.0.3 beta before the end of the year (with backported bugfixes from the 4.1 branch). A bugfix to datedit.c was commited, as was a change to the timer synchronization code. Vincent (Penquerc'h) reported a problem with the mixer on one machine, which is still being investigated. Elias (Pschernig)'s xkeymap utility was included in tools/x11. The old close button API was reinstalled in the CVS code and tested. Then Ben Davis posted a long message about the breakage of the close button in the new WIP and that it broke DUMB. There was some discussion afterwards, and the conclusion was that strict API compatibility cannto be guarenteed during development, something which wasn't clearly stated in the documentation. The docs were subsequently changed to make this explicid. The bottom line of this discussion is: a WIP is a WIP, not a stabel release. If things are broken, well, too bad, but that's why it's called a WIP. A documentation change was made to make it clear that video bitmaps are lost after a call to set_gfx_mode(). There's a crash issue (from 4.1.4) on w2k (related to the switching code, I think) that is under investigation. Matthew reported the broken build of 4.1.6 for MinGW, which was promptly fixed in CVS. aj requested an additional flag to the Windows window creation code. I'm not sure for what, but I think he wants to be able to use drag and drop to an Allegro program. Finally, Hein Zelle inquired if the new textprintf_ex family will be re-named to textprintf, but notes that api.txt probably implies that they cannot be. He also requested some clarification about the function renaming scheme. There, you're all up to date now I'm not sure when I have a MixedCaps conversion header, but I'll try to have it sometime next week. No hard promises, though. EDIT: Quote: If someone can weekly come up with a similar style report for Allegro, I'd be glad to host / promote it.
I could do that. It may be saver to have two people for the job, though. Just in case one of us is eaten by real life issues |
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Rash
Member #2,374
May 2002
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Has anyone ever tried SDL_net? Opinions? |
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the_y_man
Member #1,770
December 2001
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did u guys ever notice that when we talk SDL vs Allegro, TH ends up being attacked some way or another! I think it's pretty good that the guy has knowledge of both kits... |
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Zaphos
Member #1,468
August 2001
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Erm, well, THarte writes things about allegro's interface and such that some people disagree with, and often introduces "another side" to the discussion, which is GOOD, and it is also GOOD for people to challenge what they do not understand as this is the way that discussions like these can teach people and open minds ... so I would not really say it's a Bad Thing that TH ends up defending his views more often than not. Of course, any attacks on TH as a person are immature, and while they may be an offspring of debate, ideally would not happen. TH is a good person with some good points, and even if he were not there would still be no excuse to abuse him. Thankfully, this tends to be kept to a relative minimum, I think... I do hope he has not been too offended!
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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I don't know... I find that everytime theres a Allegro vs. SDL discussion, someone ends up whining about the api or the naming convenstion. Its really anoying. and serves no purpose in these threads. [edit]Or someone starts whining about how the developers NEVER listen to anyone, i mean even though they work on allegro in thier own time, they should OF COURSE bow to the whims of every single user. Yup. thats what we need. We need to integrate AllegroGl, alogg, allegpng, libnet, mpg123, pthreads, etc, all while supporting: windows, unix, linux, dos, MacOS 9, MacOS 10, etc.... -- |
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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Quote: I find that everytime theres a Allegro vs. SDL discussion, someone ends up whining about the api or the naming convenstion. Its really anoying. and serves no purpose in these threads. I think that would lead one to believe that perhaps that Allegro then could use an API clean-up? If someone asks what does SDL have over Allegro, an obvious response is going to be "a cleaner API"*. So, whether you like it or not, it is relevent, and it's going to be brought up. Does there need to be much discussion on that point? Not really. ~~~~~
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: but just consistancy in names, parameter order, etc.
Been discussed muchly on the lists (IIRC). And will probably come up again -- |
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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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I don't want to put too much weight in the poll, but right now (at 106 votes), unders_score, smallCaps and CapitalizedWords all have roughly one third to one quarter of the votes, with under_score having a slight majority. I agree with Zaphos' remarks about TH having good points and being a valuable contribution to the discussion. |
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Zaphos
Member #1,468
August 2001
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Er, well, the smallCaps and CapitalizedWords styles are similar enough to me that I imagine them to be essentially the same category - essentially, it's splitting the votes on that. If you artificially "unsplit" the votes, it looks worse for teh under_score. Furthermore, since many people seem to learn C along with Allegro, Allegro teaches some the under_score, thus perhaps giving a skew from what one might see if, say, GDNet were surveyed. ANYWAY, your thingymajig would be the ultimate solution, Evert ... and furthermore, this is a point not entirely worth arguing about. It's mainly a personal preference, to me, and if it's the only problem with allegro 5 then the developers should be darn proud!
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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Quote: So I'd say that the claim that Allegro is bad for using under_scores because everyone uses AlternatingCaps has been refuted. ... If you artificially "unsplit" the votes, it looks worse for teh under_score. Well, as of this post, ~50% is for SomeSortOfCaps and ~50% is not. But I must stress that this poll does not accurately represent all programmers. Let's say there were no duplicate votes, no cheating, no lieing, etc. The most the poll could do is show the preference of Allegro.cc visitors. If the same question were to be asked on a site like gamedev (mostly Windows/DirectX people), then I think under_score would be soundly beaten. If I were to disallow non-member votes on this poll, the under_score jumps to nearly 80%. All of this said, I think we can safely assume that no one style is going to cover the over-whelming majority. However, we can be assured not not many people would be pleased with ArTiStIc(). |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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hehe. For the SomeKindOfCaps method the only reason people code that way is cause that is what they learned. I happened to learn the under_score method. Now, everytime I try and code in C++ I keep wanting to use the SomeKindOfCaps for classes and such cause thats how I learned C++. But it looks ugly with a mix of both. -- |
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Thomas Harte
Member #33
April 2000
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Quote: So I'd say that the claim that Allegro is bad for using under_scores because everyone uses AlternatingCaps has been refuted. I'd sum it up like this (with 195 votes cast) : 39.49% prefer a scheme with underscores in it. 58.46% prefer not to have underscores. I think that result speaks for itself. 50.77% prefer a scheme with some capitalisation, with 47.18% opposed. Which doesn't really reveal a lot, but I guess some capitalisation nominally wins the argument. Only 26.67% prefer a naming scheme where the first letter of a function is capitalised, leaving a very clear majority of 71.28% opposed to capitalisation of the first letter. Therefore, it seems that even on a site which, as Matthew Leverton suggests, is probably biased towards the existing system, the statistics at this stage suggest that the best compromise would be no underscores, first letter lowercase, every other word given a capital. As has been pointed out, the underscores would win in a 'first past the post' type system. Therefore, given that we all accept that there is unlikely to be a consensus, the remaining question is surely whether it is better to compromise and try to offend least people, or to stick to the single majority winner. Notably the single majority winner is very nearly (i.e. give or take the issue of first letter capitalisation) the exact opposite of the compromise scheme. Quote: If I were to disallow non-member votes on this poll, the under_score jumps to nearly 80% What about people like me, who may have voted on arrival at the site, and then later logged in? How can you tell whether a vote in that circumstance is a member vote or not? [My site] [Tetrominoes] |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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If you arnt loged in you arnt a member. Or at least theres no way to tell. -- |
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Trumgottist
Member #95
April 2000
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The poll also asks "which most closely resembles your coding style", not "what would you prefer Allegro to use". To some of us, there's a difference... -- Play my game: Frasse and the Peas of Kejick |
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Thomas Harte
Member #33
April 2000
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Quote: The poll also asks "which most closely resembles your coding style", not "what would you prefer Allegro to use". To some of us, there's a difference... True, but on the other hand it definitely isn't safe to say that the front page poll strongly backs underscores as the function naming preference of all, and it would probably be naive to say that that this thread didn't in some way influence the choice of poll. Quote: I also somewhat understand the annoyance in TF's posts, because TH has a way of hammering his points down that annoys me as well from time to time. Hehe... next year I'm planning to train in law. No, seriously. I'm England/Wales based and intend to be a solicitor so won't (without further training) have rights of audience above the magistrates court, and probably won't be in court much at all, but in that and other mediation matters I'm just going to have a great time! [My site] [Tetrominoes] |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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My brother was the same way... He'd win an argument even if it took him years. (and he'd have valid substantial proof... always hated that about him -- |
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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Quote: What about people like me, who may have voted on arrival at the site, and then later logged in? How can you tell whether a vote in that circumstance is a member vote or not? Actually I could easily tell by IP Address and member location 'habits', but it doesn't mean enough to me to do the calculation. I think the split between: smallCaps() and CapitalizeWords() is interesting. Lets say Allegro (or any library) were to choose some form of the above. Now you would have arguments against those two. Then furthermore, you would have arguments against: LIBNAME_FunctionCall() And so on... I think it would be easier if it were like a C64 where you only had (realistically) one case and eight (I think) characters for naming. |
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Zaphos
Member #1,468
August 2001
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Yeah, the naming argument is endlessness, although a large amount of surveying of various internet populaces might give some basis to a decision. At the point where you're adding the libname on, it seems kinda arbitrary (except that ALLCAPS almost never wins anything, heh), though ... and most of the people will be satisfied just ignoring the issue. Oh well; one does what one can and then moves on, no use dwelling on irrelevancies. Hmm .. single case computer systems ... I bet that's why COBOL uses the ALLCAPS convention ... Anyway, be interesting to see if you can get some more significant survey data on api user preferences with that discussion-group-idea-thing!
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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Eek! I'm suddenly reminded of QuickBASIC's IDE. It used to change all the keywords to UPPERCASE. shudder Work on my wrapper is going smoothly, though I'd like someone else to try it before releasing it. The MixedCaps positively hurt my eyes, though |
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Peter Hull
Member #1,136
March 2001
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<offtopic>
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Ariesnl
Member #2,902
November 2002
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SDL SUCKS... !! Allegro never gave me any problem.... Perhaps one day we will find that the human factor is more complicated than space and time (Jean luc Picard) |
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miran
Member #2,407
June 2002
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Quote: even an idiot can work with it So that's why my games sucks.... -- |
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so [uncle sam]Allegro Needs YOU[/uncle sam]!