Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 15:17:27 +0300 (EEST) From: Hannu Savolainen Subject: Re: SDL uses obsolete OSS features I did some work on getting OSS to work better with SDL. There have been some problems with select which should be fixed now. I'm having some problems in understanding what is the purpose of the DSP_WaitAudio() routine. I added a return to the very beginning of this routine and commendted out the define for USE_BLOCKING_WRITES. At least lbreakout2 seems to work as well as earlier. The latencies are the same. An ordinary blocking write does exactly the same thing than DSP_WaitAudio does. So I would recommend using the USE_BLOCKING_WRITES approach and removing everything from the DSP_WaitAudio routine. Also enabling USE_BLOCKING_WRITES makes it possible to simplify DSP_PlayAudio() because you don't need to handle the partial writes (the do-while loop). Attached is a patch against SDL-1.2.7. After these changes SDL will use OSS as it's designed to be used (make it as simple as possible). This code should work with all OSS implementations because it uses only the very fundamental features that have been there since the jurassic times.

To compile and install SDL:

    1.  Run './configure; make; make install'

        If you are compiling for Windows using gcc, read the FAQ at:
        http://www.libsdl.org/faq.php?action=listentries&category=4#42

        If you are compiling using Visual C++ on Win32, you should read
        the file VisualC.html

    2.  Look at the example programs in ./test, and check out the HTML
        documentation in ./docs to see how to use the SDL library.

    3.  Join the SDL developer mailing list by sending E-mail to
    	sdl-request@libsdl.org
        and put "subscribe" in the subject of the message.

        Or alternatively you can use the web interface:
            http://www.libsdl.org/mailing-list.php

That's it!
Sam Lantinga <slouken@libsdl.org>