Re: [freesci-develop] Glutton OS X sound support & wrapper for FreeSCI, was: Concerning C416: No sound on Mac OS X

[Matthew Herberg]

On Sep 28, 2003, at 5:03 AM, Matt wrote:

> I like SDL, was  there any other similar multi-platform graphic module 
> considered for Glutton or is SDL kinda seen as a standard?
> It would be nice to get SDL working again for Glutton if its still 
> being considered, I doubt Glutton will give any output right now for 
> OS X.

Just a month or two ago I got glutton running on OS X, sans sound (if I 
remember correctly it wasn't too difficult). Not sure how it is now.

The funny thing is that this project has support for many libraries, 
such as directfb and libggi. Personally I don't see the purpose of 
having any other  library than SDL, as it is by far the most mature and 
supported cross platform multimedia library I know of. I don't know 
much about directfb, but I think using OpenGL through SDL would be a 
more portable option for hardware accelerated graphics.

> Well, there are several different flavors if you want to support audio 
> for OS X. You could either go for using Carbon (as SDL does right 
> now), use Cocoa (NSSound) or use HAL directly (which should resemble a 
> lot like Carbon calls).
> If SDL sound support is being considered it might be the most useful 
> to use SDL anyway for sound and start converting the sound support in 
> SDL to Cocoa or HAL.

Well, I'd personally prefer SDL. If there isn't any driver when I start 
my major work, I'll write it.

> Cocoa is your friend (for sure in winter;), check out 
> prepareForDragOperation, performDragOperation and 
> concludeDragOperation, I bet the dragging is easier with Cocoa, it 
> just takes some time to get used to its standard.
> Carbon tows a lot of OS 9 with it which you do not care for in this 
> case, also just having finished some work with task control under 
> Cocoa, its very easy as Cocoa was written with calling unix utilities 
> in mind.

Great, thanks. No need to convert me... I'm a Cocoa guy and know very 
little about Carbon. I just wasn't sure of the availability of all 
event handlers in Cocoa. Thanks for the pointers. I also love NSTask 
and have used it extensively in other projects!

> And yes, also I had such a FreeSCI wrapper in mind, however since you 
> are already preparing for it in the winter you should go ahead with 
> it.
> I had a very basic and small FreeSCI wrapper in an user friendly disk 
> image in mind to help promoting FreeSCI / SDL in the OS X community.
> Nothing fancy just basic functionality as I am not sure if there are 
> many Sierra enthusiast on the OS X platform.
> I would still like to see such a thing right now for FreeSCI 0.3.4, 
> making something complex might not be needed if there is not much 
> request for it.
> Based on the response you could expand or keep it small.
> Slowly starting to understand the Mac community preferably there 
> should be a demo with the wrapper, else you will just a thousand 
> questions back.
> Let me know if you want to go for something nice for Glutton, I (or us 
> together) could probably wrap something up fast for FreeSCI.

Seriously, I'm swamped with work so if you want to release a simple 
version please don't let me hold you back. The demo idea is fantastic 
(and they're small). When I have free time this winter we could 
definitely work together on a nice glutton build (assuming glutton is 
far enough around then). I personally was thinking of creating a real 
preferences file in ~/Library/Preferences, creating a good icon, adding 
open dialogs, and maybe adding a preference windows. Just recently it's 
become easy to make SDL applications even more OS X like, so there may 
be some more possibilities.

> Since you are talking about multiple fixes that you were submitting, 
> do you maybe have a fix for that darn cursor bug that OS X seems to 
> have?
> My cursor is fragmented, so basically a line, then an empty (see 
> through) line, then a line again, after which a see through line, and 
> so on (kind of like the video in Wing Commander 3 and 4).

Actually I haven't tried those games and I didn't notice a cursor 
problem in the few King's Quest games I tried. I just haven't much time 
in freesci lately so I have no clue how to fix it.

> Also, would the performance for the adlibemu be better with (real) 
> sound cards instead if the basic Apple soundcards? The only card I 
> find that has OS X support is the Revolution 7.1 but it does not have 
> midi channels.
> I was hoping to get real midi through my soundblaster live but it 
> seems Creative dropped OS X support. Searching over the internet it 
> looks like the soundblaster cards are the only sound cards left with 
> midi channel support.

I actually have no clue about midi in OS X. I'm not even sure how 
CoreMidi and CoreAudio support for midi works. Best of luck (if I 
wasn't late for a meeting now,,, yes on a Sunday!... I'd be able to 
look up some info and try to help you). Sorry!

-Matt