----- Original Message -----
From: Stefan Matthias Aust <sma at netsurf.de>
To: <squeak at cs.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 1999 12:25 PM
Subject: Suggestion for a new portable VM layer


This is really interesting, Sefan.  I would like to see it as a Squeak-VM
base, along with the needed *callback* facility in Squeak.


Regards,

Shaping



> Hi!
>
> Browsing the web, I stumbled about SDL
> (http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/), a portable multi-platform low
> level graphics API which also supports sound, threads and networking.
> Using this API, one could probably create one single source base for most
> platforms (but not all), unifying development and speeding up the
> development of the platform dependent C part of a Squeak VM.
>
> SDL is a free C library especially for creating games on Linux and
Windows.
>  The author is a lead programmer at Loki Entertainment Software.  Judging
> the webpage, it has already been used in quite a few games and other multi
> media applications.
>
> SDL supports 8 bit or higher video modes with direct memory access (with
> different endian support), using hardware acceleration if possible. It
> supports events for keyboard, mouse and other window or application
events.
> Then, it can playback 8 and 16 bit sound in a second thread and can
control
> audio CDs. Furthermore, libraries for threads, timers and network access
> exist.
>
> Supported platforms are linux with X11 w/ DGA and MTRR, Win32 with GDI or
> DirectX and BeOS.  Unofficial ports are available for Solaris, IRIX,
> FreeBSD and MacOS. There's also a linux version using the SVGA library
> and/or GGI.  These are considered unstable.
>
> From the tutorial, I think, the library supports everything a Squeak VM
> needs and much more.  The event support is especially interesting as this
> could help to create an event-driven VM.  Even portable multithreading
> could become true.
>
>
> bye
> --
> Stefan Matthias Aust  //  Bevor wir fallen, fallen wir lieber auf.
>
>
>