Re: [AD] Custom packfiles

[Chris <chris.kcat@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Evert Glebbeek wrote:
> I agree with Peter that I don't really like the idea of a new `state' in 
> Allegro. Maybe I'm just not yet used to the idea though.

Perhaps. Or maybe I just don't fully understand Peter's method. Looking 
back at it, I think I see where he's going, now.. Basically he'd split 
up, say, load_wav into load_wav and load_wav_pf. load_wav would open up 
the file as a PACKFILE, pass it to load_wav_pf, amd then close the 
PACKFILE, right? If so, I think I'm alright with that.. except I'm not 
sure I like the naming convention of the vtable methods or functions. 
Since the vtable is in a stuct, I don't see any reason to prepend them 
with pf_, and I'd think normal Allegro convention for the functions 
would be to put the pf_ first, so it'd be pf_load_wav, pf_load_bmp, etc.

Now, as I understand it, the packfile handles would each contain a 
pointer to their vtable, right? So functions such as pack_fread, 
pack_fseek, etc, would actually run functions from the vtable?

This does bring up one question for me, though.. what would we do about 
seeking? pack_fseek doesn't have a 'whence' parameter, and we can't add 
one. I think the best thing to do would be to allow negative seeking (at 
least pass on negativee values to the vtable function, and let that 
worry about failing ot succeeding). Either that, or create a new 
function, but I'm not too sure that'd be worth it for this.

</night-time ramblings>