Re: [AD] Allegro plug-in system (was: Is there a licensing reason why PNG isn't built-in to Allegro?)

[Elias Pschernig <elias@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 18:27 -0300, Victor wrote:
> So, It looks likes that allegro should:
> 
> 1. Have a very light basic stuff core.
> 2. Put BMP, PCX, WAV, MID, FLC/FLI, joystick stuff apart of allegro
> core in something like a "allegro standard plug-ins package". (Probably
> a few non-core things would still left in the core, but this should be
> keeped in the minimum).
> 3. Create some type of simple, effeciently (and if possible backward
> compatible) plug-in structure.
> 
> After that, allegro would be more mainteneable. Some already well-known
> plugins, like Allogg and AllegroGL will benefit from this plug-in
> system and will no more get out of sync with allegro version (and
> eventually they'll be found in the standard plug-ins package). The
> creation and implementation of other types, alternative and/or third
> party plug-ins would get easier.
> 
> So someone who thinks in creating a game which use just some part of
> allegro, don't need to get all the other things around.
> 
> On the negative side, this could increase the complexity of the
> implementation and the user would get multiple DLLs (one for the core
> and one for each dependency), which isn't good, specially when their
> versions get out of sync. But i think that it wouldn't be hard to
> workaround this.
> 
> Just a idea...
> 

Yes, that's basically the idea. Not sure about details though. For
things like PNG, I really think other file formats like PCX should have
no special status compared to it (except that BMP/TGA/PCX would be in
the compatibility layer - so the compatibility layer simply could
require certain plugin(s), no problem there).

One thing I have no clear idea of yet is OpenGL support. I dislike the
current 4.2 solution, since the whole duplicated window creation just
feels wrong, and it seems to be the fault of the current architecture.
So maybe we can have the posisbility to get into OpenGL mode without
even loading any Allegro graphics driver - in which case, AllegroGL
would stay an addon. But then, things like extension handling and
converting bitmaps and fonts (the latter two require the former) also
are important, so we'd probably want those parts too..

-- 
Elias Pschernig