OpenEuphoria

Re: Re: What we really need...

• Posted by irv at take.maxleft.com Nov 13, 2002
• 480 views

On Tuesday 12 November 2002 09:55 pm, Ray wrote:
>
> david wrote:
> > Re: Kickstart Euphoria?
> >
> > A good start would be translating abandonware PC games into Euphoria.
> > Then redistribute them as freeware after debugging them.
>
> [snip]
>
> As far as I can tell very few Euphoria people are interested
> (or at least active) in the area of game making.

Actually, newcomers to Euphoria often seem most interested in games.
Unfortunately, these are always people who have never tried writing a game. 
Those who *have* tried already know that creating a playable game is perhaps 
the most difficult programming task imaginable.

This is unfortunate, because many beginning programmers think that 
a game would be 'cool'. (Hey, I thought it would be 'cool' to fly an F-16, 
but I only got as far as a Cessna 152 Aerobat :) So they get discouraged and 
give up.

> This suggestion wouldn't hurt (almost everything helps) but much
> better results would be gained by:
>
> * Writing tutorials, getting started guides, web pages etc
>
> * An officially sponsored library (well documented and as cross
> platform as possible) - one of two of these started as sourceforge
> projects didn't they? what ever happened?  These should be in the main
> Euphoria download or at least highly visible on the main eu web site.
>
> * More and better libraries of all types including doco and examples,
> (cross platform libraries being better)

There's lots of good code in the archives. Finding it is not real easy, and 
using it is even less easy. Why? Because there is no accepted standard 
for coding or documentation. If there were an officially sponsored library, 
and some published standards, people could choose to follow those standards 
or ignore them, with the understanding that they wouldn't get into the 
official library unless they followed the guidelines.

> and for something completely different ...
>
> * A cross platform GUI library! (I'm sure no more needs to said on
> this topic that has been beaten to death!)

Yes, and no. There are real problems with cross-platform GUI's.
All things considered, a cross-platform GUI is probably way down the list 
of important things to do.

Regards,
Irv