Open Amiga - Defining the Standards

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I wish I knew more about MESA, but I was under the impression that is was just a derivative of OpenGL... thus OpenGL would make sense as the API standard.

I will look up MESA as soon as I get some free time.

Side Note: Given that OpenGL is the standard across all platforms and is an integral part of SDL, it will have to be supported wether we like it or not.  :-)


-Edit- Yup, MESA does use the OpenGL API, so by supporting OpenGL we include MESA  (in fact MESA might even become the standard implementation of the API across the platforms as it's free...):-D

Linq
http://www.mesa3d.org/

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POSIX it totslly irelevant for this disscussion, other than Openamiga needs to define a standard for it.

The API's that openamiga covers have nothing to do with what POSIX covers.

POSIX, is about tasks, memory, threads, stdio, etc... kernel stuff...

Openamiga is about gfx, audio, networking, 3D, MEdia layers.. etc...

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Witha ll due repect, I don;t see why even diverging platforms can't still support an openamiga standard?

The Standard will continue to be revised and improved and even somthing as simple as SDL (with it's supported OpenGL 3D system) support suddenly opens up loads of new games!!

Unix should have died yeas ago, but look at all the unixoids out there!!! and they are all pretty much source code compatible... why can't the Amiga have somthing similar?

 :-)

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The point of this is to consolidate the fact that all Three OS porjects have quite a high degree of compatibility.

It surely makes sense to define the specification for this compatibility and allow developers a minimum spec to allow quick and easy porting of software across the OS's thus increasing the software base, userbase and developer base.

There also been some disscusion as to the possiblity of Binary compatibility on the same CPUs... this has obvious advantages, for everyone.

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I think that everyone should see benefits. We are not saying:

"Do this, do that"

All we are saying is, Every OS soloutin has it's strengths and weakneses... fine, they also have their supporters, even better!!! But if we want lots of lovely software, then there has to be some kind of common path.

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The Tearm I use with AROS is "Cross pollenate"  :-D

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I seem to be answering most of the question around the web :-)

I would be happy to moderate  ;-)

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By all means, if you want to have an open standard, you have to abstract from the packages you have. You need to define an API layer that can be mapped to the specific API's of the systems you are targeting. The only item from the list that fits this is SDL. Anything else is choosing one package and making it standard

Ok, you have misunderstood, maybe, my reasons for choosing the systems I did.

Every API I listed had to forefill three requirements:
1. It is a commonly used API in the comunity.
2. It is available on every platform
3. A Free alternative must exist (if no native verison is available).

The only two that don't fit are OpenGL and SDL, these I added because I think they are very important, for the future.

It really was as simple as that... no politics, no jibes, no conspiricy... just simple logic.  :-)

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Only when you control the API can you ensure interoperability. This is why a program like GIMP can run on Windows and linux - because it is based on glib and gtk.

Indeed, and I agree. But what we are defining here is not an attempt to contol the platform, but rather an attempt to identify the commonality of the existing OS solutions... Thus allowing the easy spread of software.

I would hope that in future the amiga community can decide what specification the openamiga platform should have, and it can be revised accordingly.

The problem is that we don't share the same view of the world with regard to this problem, and thus we don;t see the same solution  :-(

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Your pain killers sound great, I want some :-D

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ok, will do ;-)

Actually my mate Steve broke his neck about 4 years ago and he claims the drugs they gave him for that were amasing..  :-o

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Like an OpenAmiga library that developers can use to ensure interoperability, and that will allow the standard to evolve, and also allow AmigaOSiods (love that word  ) to evolve in all thier different directions without having to worry about the AmigaOpen standard within the OS itself?

Well that is exactly what we are doing, only we can't have one library for obvious reasons, so the functionality of the Open standard is divided up inot separate libraries... namely: cgx, ahi, mui, bsd socket... etc...
ixemul is an API of very limited scope... it is sort of analogous to amigas exec.library in a way... you see? It doesn't cover gfx or audio and stuff they need spearate standard libraries.

Basicly you have got the idea in one, but we can't rally have a massive single monolithic library to do it, that is not the amiga way  :-D

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I am making an assumption here, which is that your idea of openamiga is simply to create a set of programming standards to ensure software is easily portable between various Amiga style OS's.

That is exactly it.

As for copyrighted material, the Openamiga referance platform is totally Opensource. Thus not a single peice of protected IP is required to forefill the platform requirements.  :-)