Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 15:54:33 +0800 (GMT)
From: Orlando Andico <orly AT gibson DOT eee DOT upd DOT edu DOT ph>
To: Shawn Hargreaves <slh100 AT york DOT ac DOT uk>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Allegro and linux
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.3.91.960615092426.25225D-100000@tower.york.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.93.960617155113.8064F-100000@gibson.eee.upd.edu.ph>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Sat, 15 Jun 1996, Shawn Hargreaves wrote:

> It won't work at present. I don't have any experience of Linux, but at a 
> guess, I would imagine the hard work in porting it would be converting 
> the keyboard/mouse/timer/etc code (this would probably involve completely 

I'm really just hazarding a guess here, since I don't use Allegro at
present. Linux has this textmode driver called gpm which virtualizes the
mouse. I'm not sure how you handled the timer stuff (God forbid -- using
an interrupt handler and reprogramming the PIC) but UN*X has a more
elegant version in setitimer(). I know DJGPP has it, too.

> rewriting most of it). I don't know how you access video memory under 
> Linux, but assumming there is some way of getting direct access to it, 
> the graphics code would be pretty easy to convert. And then there's the 
> sound code... The sample player probably wouldn't cause much trouble, but 
> I think the MIDI player would present problems. Does Linux support MIDI? 
> I fear not...

Linux does support MIDI with the Linux Sound System. Although at least one
Linux MIDI player first converts the MIDI to PCM, then blasts that out on
/dev/audio.. not optimal on memory and CPU cycles, but portable since it'd
also work on Suns without modification..