Re: [AD] Leveraging the OS' window management

[Hein Zelle <hein@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Laurence Withers wrote:

> It seems that we do need a built-in GUI, mainly for the grabber. It is
> also useful for things like setup, examples, and tests. So we can't
> really just remove it and tell people to use an add-on. I think we
> therefore have three main options:
> 
> Simplify it
> -----------

That doesn't sound too useful to me. Cleaning up just 'for the
cleaning' is not such a good idea in this case, because it may remove
functionality that's being used, and as long as the gui is still
inside allegro you'll always keep the 'why can't the gui do a, b, c?'
questions.

> Leave it alone
> --------------

That's one basic option, although I imagine this is about right the
point where we can easily split it off or alter things. Not a bad
option to me, but not a very good one either.

> Replace it
> ----------

I wouldn't exactly replace it, but split it off. I see the need for
the gui, both in the grabber and in all old allegro programs that use
it. Martijn has a very valid point: it has always been a part of
allegro, you cannot really take it out now and expect users to be
happy about it. Changing code for a new api is one thing, having to
write your own windowing system is more than most people will be
willing to do.

Why exactly couldn't the gui (at this point in the development process)
be split off from the main library? I don't care how the internals
of the gui are beautified, but taking it out of the base allegro and
supplying it as a standard addon seems like a good idea. Grabber can
just link with -lgui, and anyone who uses it in old programs can do
the same -> no loss of backward compatibility. Extending the gui /
cleaning it up becomes much easier this way too, I imagine. 

I'd go for point 3, where I'd read 'replace it' as 'take it out of the
main library' and optionally clean it up. I'd try to prevent
substantially changing the workings of the gui, to porting old
programs easy.

Hein Zelle

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 Hein Zelle                     hein@xxxxxxxxxx
	                        http://www.icce.rug.nl/~hein
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