Hi Shaun, To begin with I do believe you have a misunderstanding what SDL is. SDL, the Simple Direct Media Layer, is a cross-platform multimedia library that handles graphics, sound, input events, etc. So ripping SDL out of Dropbox and replacing it with something else isn't nearly as easy as you make it sound. I do believe Dosbox would have to be completely rewritten from scratch in order to remove SDL support so you are overly simplifying the situation.
However, to answer your questions more directly the first problem by removing SDL is we'd lose the cross-platform support. I know many Windows users would not care about that so much, but anyone using Linux or Mac OS would certainly lose out just by yanking SDL out and replacing it with a platform specific API. The second and perhaps more serious issue is the way Dropbox displays its contents to the screen is through a graphics library. In other words what is displayed on screen in Dropbox is drawn directly to the screen the way video game graphics and text are drawn to the screen so yanking SDL out and replacing it with another graphics library like Direct3D or OpenGL won't help the situation any. Cheers! On 1/9/15, shaun everiss <sm.ever...@gmail.com> wrote: > hmmm dosbox is opensource, what would be the disadvantage of gettring > rid of sdl entirely, obviously you would need the old 16 bit support > which is why sdl is probably used, but why is there not a port > without sdl or at least sdl for output, it seems the most logical way > to handle this is kill sdl entirely but what other purpose is it > needed then for output. > and if its needed for more things than output then could output be > put somewhere either via dosbox itself or via some sort of dosbox > translater that connects with it like a frontend/ backend, there are > frontends for dosbox for some games that doesn't help us for text > games sadly but a program that used an emulator like dosbox to run > 16bit apps but did its own outputs either as a windows or console app > would that work, something like a vm without all the crazyness you > need to make a vm work like a portable vm. > Hmm if josh's dos vm could be made such that the vm was portable with > the python libraries included and everything compiled with maybe the > only need to install com 0 com or even have it as part of the setup > package and all the other stuff and have it run off one icon one > executable that would install and run all files and manage itself > like a standard windows program I'd have no issue running it. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
