[AD] Allegro 5 (6?) - Public Request For Comments

[Bob <ohannessian@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone.

(mirrored from 
http://www.allegro.cc/ubb-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000002 )

For some time now, Allegro 5 (or 6 - more on that later) was discussed on 
the conductors list. Allegro 4.0 is in feature freeze, and is due for 
release any decade now.

In the mean time, the other devs and I started talking about the future of 
Allegro. It was decided that Allegro 5 will break backward compatibility 
with Allegro 4, simply to fix everything that's wrong with the current API. 
For example, functions and variabled will now be prefixed with 'al_'. So 
blit() will be called al_blit(). This step was necessary for Allegro to 
"play nice" with other (bigger and older) libraries which use similar or 
identical names as Allegro. We also wanted to release the prefixed version 
as early as possible, and since it would break backward compatibility, it 
deserved its own major version number - hense 5.0. However, there are a lot 
more issues that needed addressing, so many that it may take a few years to 
get everything done (think 3.0 -> 4.0 transition). This is where Allegro 6 
comes in. Either Allegro 5 and Allegro 6 will be the same, or they will be 
different, incompatible, and released quite some time appart. This hasn't 
yet been decided.

However, since we are breaking the API, we have the opportunity to start 
with a (semi) blank sheet of paper.

I had originally posted a list of things to be discussed, to which there 
were many replies on the Conductors list. So that not everyone gets lost, or 
asks for stuff that has already beaten to death, I have assembled those 
posts, and placed them here. Read those first.

Since Allegro now has a large community, we thought the RFC/suggestions for 
the new Allegro should be made public. This is why matthew was kind enough 
to open a whole new forum for Allegro development (thanks matthew!)

We'd like to know what are your opinions on new features, API, etc. What 
would you like Allegro to be in 1-3 years? What would you ilke to see 
implemented? Is there some things in API you don't like? How about the way 
it's distributed? The documentation? The mascot?  :D


Please, do NOT respond to this thread, instead, post on the Allegro.cc web 
boards.

http://www.allegro.cc/ubb-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000002


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