Message-Id: <3355F8DC.101B@canvaslink.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 06:18:04 -0400
From: Tom Grandgent <tgrand AT canvaslink DOT com>
Reply-To: tgrand AT canvaslink DOT com
Organization: Canvas Link, Inc.
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: bf461 AT cleveland DOT freenet DOT edu
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: AllegroX project?
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> It wouldn't be difficult to figure out at all, just time consuming
> since you'd have to reinvent windows. What's the point?  You already
> got windows.  It doesn't matter what that driver was MEANT to do, the
> point is you don't know what it DOES do, and they could use ANY aspect
> of windows they wanted to make their driver work the way it does, and
> especially when it comes to resource management, interrupts settings, 
> interfacing with the monitor, etc. etc.  Do you want to recode all
> those portions of windows?
> You might as well rewrite windows before even bothering.

Ok, I agree that it would probably be a real waste of time to try and
do DirectX support in plain DOS.  However, I think that giving DOS
programs running under Win95 access to DirectX may be an easier thing
to do.

> Quake doesn't implement a Windows Socket Driver in dos, which is the
> equivalent to the DirectX driver problem.  Quake simply uses the
> windows driver while Windows is running.  If windows isn't running, 
> Quake can't use it.  Quake did nothing spectacular there.  

Well, I know Quake is just using the Windows socket driver.  It used
the MPath Winsock Tunnel to get access to it.  I was basically trying
to say that if it can be done with Winsock, perhaps the same type of
thing could be done with some aspects of DirectX support.

> I've suggested it before anyways.  Why not just run Allegro as a
> Windows 95 Console program and use the DirectX features that way?
> That makes the most sense to me!  You get the best of both worlds w/o
> all the fuss of the Windows 95 interface (unless of course someone
> wants to add support in to DJGPP, which I'm hoping is a reality soon).

Why not run Allegro as a Win95 console app?  Because it's only for
DOS!  Isn't this correct, or have I been missing the Win32 versions
of Allegro and DJGPP? :)  My ideal programming environment would be
a Win32 DJGPP with a Win32 Allegro..  But wouldn't Allegro have to
undergo massive changes to work under native Windows?

	Tom Grandgent
	tgrand AT canvaslink DOT com
	Canvas Link, Inc.