From: Andreas Beck <becka@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de>
  To  : Tethys <tethys@it.newsint.co.uk>
  Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 20:34:54 +0200

Re: Is LibGGI for me?

> I tried posting this to the list, but it bounced because I'm not
> subscribed. I *can't* subscribe, due to bandwidth limitations here.

Yep. We require subscription to keep the spammers at bay.

> Both are essentially looking for something that will let them write
> a simple space invaders type game, a noddy calendar app or something
> similar. Both are competent programmers, and given the ability to set
> a single pixel in a given colour could work out the rest themselves,
> although neither are masochistic enough to do so, should others have
> already done it (e.g., line drawing, triangle filling or sprite placement
> routines).

I'd have to check the status of LibGGI2D for triangle filling.
Sprite stuff is being worked on, as this eventually can be accelerated,
but at least line-drawing is working :-).

> From what I've seen, LibGGI appears ideal for this. However, there are
> a couple of problems. Firstly, documentation. As I mentioned, both are
> complete novices to graphics programming. Yes, the LibGGI docs are
> relatively complete as an API reference, but I haven't been able to
> find anything in the way of a tutorial for a *novice* graphics programmer.
> For example, something that explained the basics like:
> 
> 	what a pixel is
> 	what a visual is
> 	what a graphics context is
> 	what multiple-buffering is
> 	the difference between paletted and direct colour etc.

Oh - that's something we don't quite cover. Thank you for that hint.
I'll write a rundown on that. Might take a week or so, though.

> and providing code examples at each step to show how an application 
> would look. If I've missed such a tutorial, please point me in the
> right direction.

The LibGGI demo programs are meant to be just that. They take the inverse
approach, showing an example program and heavily commenting it.

> The second problem is portability. Yes, it's reasonably portable between
> Unices, but one of the would-be LibGGI users needs to write code that's
> portable to Windows as well. 

We will resume working on the windows port as soon as we have some time.
It is intended to port LibGGI to windows.

> This guy's subject to evil influences from
> people he works with telling him he should be using DirectX and should
> forget about non-Windows platforms. I'd like to be able to provide a
> cross-platform solution instead. I know there was mention of a Win32
> port, but as far as I can tell, little progress has been made. Can anyone
> provide an update on this?

The showstopper here is dynamic library managenent, which was not
properly implemented in the available cross-platform tools when we last
tried. AFAIK this has been fixed recently.

CU, ANdy

-- 
= Andreas Beck                    |  Email :  <andreas.beck@ggi-project.org> =