[AD] Important limitation in Linux version, specially for a UNIX OS

[salvador <salvador@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All:

  This is a particular problem of the Linux version that is quite annoying
for some applications.
  Even when Allegro is a "library for games" I never used Allegro to create
games and I think is good for a lot of other tasks.
  I'm facing a very annoying problem when using the Linux version. In short:

  Why do I need to have a valid graphic output (window, VC, etc.) just to
call allegro_init?

  I think Allegro's initialization is doing too much and should let some
stuff for later.
  Let me explain the situation:
  I'm writing a daemon that receives some information from the net. This
information should be represented as a graph in a web page, so I wrote a CGI
program that creates those graphics. As I already have routines to create
those graphics for a GUI I want to reuse this code. Guess what I used for
the GUI, yes Allegro. Now, creating a CGI linked with Allegro isn't a good
idea, at least if I want to serve a descent number of graphics by minute,
and what is even worst: the graphics involves raster maps so the CGI gets
the graphics from the daemon.
  The result is that my daemon uses Allegro. The problem is that this daemon
is behaving a little silly: I need to run the daemon from X!! why? just
because I call allegro_init(), I never initialize a graphic mode, not even
sound or keyboard or mouse. I just need the blitting code and data files
handling.
  Of course I can cut down Allegro to my needs by I preffer to use the
standard library, or at least the closest possible.
  Can this annoying feature be removed?

SET

--
Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET). (Electronics Engineer)
Visit my home page: http://welcome.to/SetSoft or
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6552/
Alternative e-mail: set-soft@xxxxxxxxxx set@xxxxxxxxxx
                    set@xxxxxxxxxx
Address: Curapaligue 2124, Caseros, 3 de Febrero
Buenos Aires, (1678), ARGENTINA Phone: +(5411) 4759 0013