Re: [AD] Proposed changes for Allegro 5 (6?)

[Bob <ohannessian@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Shawn Hargreaves wrote:

> Sven Sandberg writes:
>  >  - `bmp_read8()' & co currently use longs instead of pointers. I think
>  > this is an old djgpp-ism, because `_farnspokew()' take longs as
>  > arguments. If someone knows a good reason why it must be this way,
>  > please say it. Otherwise, can we please replace `unsigned long' by
>  > `unsigned char *', `unsigned short *', and `unsigned long *'?
>
> The thinking behind using longs is that this makes the pointers
> opaque, ie. can't be dereferenced directly by the user, so
> people are forced to always access them with the bmp_read*()
> macros. If they were pointers, it would be easy to accidentally
> write *ptr, which would work on some platforms but fail on
> others.


Those functions are of the fairly advanced level, so I don't see users who 
haven't understood pointers use them :)
If they write *ptr instead of ptr, then it's a bug in the user's program, 
not Allegro.
It's also bad for portability. I32P64 x86 chips are due out very soon, and 
Allegro will be broken at that point. Better to fix it now, then having 
Allegro not run on half the world's computers in a few years :)


[snip]


--
- Robert J Ohannessian
"Microsoft code is probably O(n^20)" (my CS prof)
http://pages.infinit.net/voidstar/