Re: [AD] Old problems that still persist on Allegro 4.2 beta 3

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Ah, yes, I grepped for all internal uses of those functions and adjusted
> them by one. New attempt attached. The "last" variables are now actually
> the last character, but "end" inside the font structure is one past the
> last (well, the end :P).

Looks mostly good after a first look. One other thing (I may have missed it
before):

-         f4 = load_font(font_str, pal, param);
[...]
+         f2 = load_bitmap_font(font_str, pal, param);

Any particular reason you want to restrict load_txt_font() to bitmap fonts?
IMO, there's no reason to do that as load_font() will load bitmap fonts as
well as load_bitmap_font() would and will actually be able to load other
fonts as well (similar to calling load_bmp() instead of load_bitmap()). I
guess historically Allegro could only handle fonts loaded from bitmap
files, but at this point the limitation is artificial because the code
should not care - or am I missing something?


> For 4.3.x, we might be able to de-confuse this
> and change it to always use inclusive range, which I agree is more
> logical - but for now, not worth breaking AllegroGL because of it.

Indeed. Which reminds me - it might be a good idea to check how Glyph
Keeper handles this to make sure that isn't broken now.

> Speaking of AllegroGL, this reminds me again, we definitely should try
> to get Bob to do a synchronized release of AllegroGL when 4.2.0 is
> released. Judging from allegro.cc, AllegroGL is quite popular, either
> directly or through OpenLayer, so releasing 4.2.0 with only the CVS
> AllegroGL working together with it seems strange..

I agree. Telling people to use the latest stable Allegro and AllegroGL CVS
is a bit awkward because not everyone is willing to set up a CVS client and
go through the extra steps to get it. A new release of AllegroGL sounds
like a good idea anyway.
On the subject of OpenLayer, I've taken a look at it and it seems to me
that it does a lot of things AllegroGL does too as well as some things that
are missing from AllegroGL. Maybe Fladimir could be persuaded to help with
AllegroGL development itself and we should try to enlist him if/when we
want to make Allegro 4.3 come with an OpenGL graphgics driver by default?
Which reminds me that I have some 4.3 work lying around that I need to get
back to.

> maybe even could have
> an AllegroGL 0.3.0 (or whatever the next would be) beta1 together with
> 4.2.0 beta4 (RC1?).

Should be RC1. I had a date in mind for sometime next week, I'll write a
new message to propose/announce that later on. Also depending on wether or
not we can fix all current known issues before then (I guess so, should
make a more comprehensive list of what they are).

On that subject, how are things going on the Wine front? I've seen that
you've found and sortof fixed the bug in Wine; do you have any idea on
wether it will be applied or not?

Evert