Re: [AD] Platform specific functions in A5 [was Re: Windows Addition for Message Parsing]

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 8 Oct 2008, at 22:07, Trent Gamblin wrote:
> On Wed, October 8, 2008 6:50 pm, Evert Glebbeek said:
> > So anyway, there's two questions here:
> > 1. do we want a platform specific function for Windows that allows
> > the user to intercept the Windows messages?
> > 2. specific to this particular patch, do we provide this for the few
> > people who want to do something like support multiple mice?
> >
> > The answer to the first question, I think, is maybe, or a cautious
> > and well thought-out yes. The answer to the second question is no.
> > If
> > we want to provide people with the option of using multiple mice,
> > then this is not the way to go. Or in other words, adding it for
> > that
> > reason is adding it for the wrong reason.
>
> Yes, I agree with that. I thought the function could be useful for
> other things as well, although I admit I haven't thought of other
> uses.

Yeah, so that's actually the other thing we may want to think about:  
are there situations where a user would want to do something that we  
currently don't support, with the current design could only do so by  
injecting a platform specific function, but which we could, with a  
slight change in design, support in a platform neutral way?

Obviously we're never going to think of everything one might possibly  
want to do now or in the future (when there may be things we don't  
even conceive of at the moment) so we shouldn't even try to aim for  
completeness, but it's good to try to catch these things now if we  
can. Obviously we can always have platform specific ways of doing  
things we didn't think of as a last resort.

That said, no, I can't think of anything obvious. A Nintendo Wii-like  
controller would presumably register as a kind of joystick?

> As for mice, I think we should support multiple mice across
> platforms. I think that would add significant value to Allegro.

Well yes, I think that's been established.

Evert