Re: [AD] AL_ prefix clashes with OpenAL

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 7, 2007, at 3:47 PM, Elias Pschernig wrote:
> One point we are currently discussing in the meeting is the clash  
> of the
> AL_ prefix for Allegro 5 with OpenAL. See for example here (a header
> from openal):
> http://www.koders.com/c/ 
> fidADF1216C9DD667D79D118F03D4D441F5689606EA.aspx?s=al.h
>
> The prefix for functions, al_, is not used by OpenAL, so no problem  
> with
> that - but there's a high probability a type name or constant name  
> will
> clash with one used by A5 (and they might add further stuff, not  
> caring
> about us).

I know this came up in the past and the conclusion then was that  
namespace collisions were unlikely to happen because of differences  
in the naming scheme. Where we simply mistaken about that or has  
something changed?
Sorry about the meeting, by the way. I came back from a trip late on  
friday and was thus busy with other things on saturday.

> * keep AL_ and al_ and try to not clash somehow (we *do* want  
> OpenAL to
> be used together with Allegro, most likely it even will be one of our
> sound backends)

If feasable, this would be my choice. Is there a way to make sure  
such a clash does not happen?

> * keep al_, but use A_ ALG_ ALX_(Allegro eXtended) A5_ ALLEGRO_ or
> something instead of AL_

In that case, I'd go for ALLEGRO_, though I really don't want to have  
to type things like ALLEGRO_GFX_AUTODETECT | ALLEGRO_GFX_WINDOWED |  
ALLEGRO_GFX_32BPP, so maybe it's not such a great idea.

> * replace both al_ and AL_ to something like above

Keeping them the same has advantages, but to my mind it's not  
strictly nescessary. It's not even nescessary that types and macro's  
follow the same AL_ naming scheme (they're different types of  
objects), so we could have AL_BITMAP and ALLEGRO_GFX_OPENGL, for  
instance.
Thinking as I type here.

> One idea also was to change the name of Allegro itself to e.g.
> AllegroPro, then use ap_ and AP_ prefixes.

Don't like this one (well, I don't like the name AllegroPro anyway),  
also because it doesn't actually solve the real problem.

> We couldn't really decide this, so asking here instead. (Myself, I'm
> leaning to a5_ and A5_ currently.)

That's probably the least painful solution, though I personally  
dislike the appearance of the number "5" as part of the name.

Evert