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SDL/ParaGUI Development Progress
- From: Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>
- To: xconq7 <xconq7 at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 15:31:15 -0700
- Subject: SDL/ParaGUI Development Progress
Hello Xconquerors,
Yesterday I was able to hook ParaGUI into Xconq's configure/make
process, and the SDL interface now links with the ParaGUI library under
both Linux and Windows. I will likely begin the next stage this
afternoon; that stage is to actually hook ParaGUI objects and methods
into the SDL interface code.
In the process of hooking up ParaGUI, I decided to slightly modify
one of the files included in the 'paragui_1.0.4_setup.exe' that I
released last week. The new file is available in the usual location:
http://xconq_hacker.home.comcast.net
down near the bottom of the page. As mentioned previously, this
installer is only useful to Windows developers and others who wish to
build from sources, and it is made with the MinGW32 tools in mind.
I will shortly be adding links to the other components required for
ParaGUI development to the downloads page.
You might also notice that a new file is available for download. This
is 'paragui-tests.exe'. It contains all of the programs that compiled
under the 'test' directory of the ParaGUI sources. This is a
self-extracting archive (I finally found a good excuse to try out
7-Zip's self-extractor (not to mention the wicked LZMA compression)[1]).
This file is intended for _anyone_ (not just developers) who is
interested in some of the things that one can do with SDL and ParaGUI. I
recommend the 'paratest.exe' and 'windowtest.exe' programs in
particular, but all of them are worth a look (except 'writetest.exe'
which doesn't have anything to see).
And a note to any concerned parties: only 3 DLL's need to be
distributed with SDL/ParaGUI apps: 'SDL.dll', 'freetype6.dll', and
'zlib1.dll', and these are all small. Thus the payload of the Xconq
Windows installers will not significantly increase.
And, for those wondering about the .zip and .xml files in the
'paragui-tests' folder, I will explain. The .zip files contain ParaGUI
themes. ParaGUI is capable of navigating in .zip files (by use of a
component known as PhysFS). Each of these .zip files contains a folder
with GUI component images as .bmp or .png files, and a XML file, which
is used to describe the theme (background images, component images,
color blending, etc...). Those wishing to make their own themes might do
well to take a look at these files. The XML files in the 'paragui-tests'
directory describe screen layouts. ParaGUI can read these layouts to
automatically set up screens. Of course, the screens can also be
generated line-by-line from code. (Technical note: ParaGUI uses an Expat
implementation to parse the XML files.)
Enjoy,
Eric
[1] The Windows installers that I distribute also use LZMA compression.
NSIS 2 supports that compression type, and in comparisons I have always
found it to be superior to others, including the Burrows-Wheeler
Transform block-sorting of bzip2.