Re: Euphoria's Future
> YEAH! WTF? No poly fillers?? That's the first thing
> you should have put in! Now that I got the chance to
> tell you right on, I did!
> And get rid of that extra DLL, it's so small I don't
> see any use for it except decreasing euAllegro's
> popularity.
Yes there is an extra DLL in euAllegro that I could remove if
my C compiler usage was better. I'll get around to it one day.
For now there are 2 dll's instead of 1 and probably a proportion of 1%
decrease in speed.
At the moment there is the standard Allegro dll (all3933.dll) and my
euall.dll
that contains the interface to all3933.dll plus the extra modules like
Mappy,
JGMOD and PPCol. It shoud be possible to link the actual all3933.dll code
right into euall.dll ... but as I said I'll get to it one day.
> Why is it that for every library wrapper that is
> created for Euphoria an extra DLL has to be created
> too? That's fucking annoying, slow, and looks bad. And
> half of the time those DLLs crash.
If you want to wrap C libraries that aren't distributed with Windows
you need to distribute DLL's (or shared libraries in Linux).
Unless you want to re-write the library in Euphoria which would
result in slower code. It is a drawback that you have to distribute
a DLL but as far as I can see their aren't any alternatives.
If you want to use Allegro ... you need a DLL.
I haven't distributed any code to the general public but it's just a
matter of coping that DLL into the same folder as your program.
Every install system allows this to be done very easily.
> For DX I could
> understand it, but OpenGL and Allergo only export C
> functions, wich should be imported using
> define_c_func() directly, not with some crazy ass DLL
> in the middle of it all.
I needed to wrap the euAllegro in another DLL for two reasons:
1. I was lazy and didn't want to convert all the C macros to Euphoria.
And Allegro uses many C macros.
2. Allegro also uses many global variables which you need to get and
set the values for. Currently there is no way to do this using Windows
Euphoria. I beleive from reading the Euphoria doco this can be done in
Linux.
> Man, if I got through to one person, all my efforts
> have paid off! Thanks for understanding the reality of
> Euphoria's future!
Many people have come and gone from the Euphoria community for probably
a lot of similar reasons which you so elegantly write :).
I gave up in disgust about 18 months ago for all the same reasons.
Then about 6 months ago ... out of pure luck I started up again with
a different attitute ... basically have a bit fun ...
but don't expect to much ... and in some cases not expecting to much
is the wrong attitude .... I have been having fun though :)
For all the power of Euphoria, at the moment it is still a toy ... at least
in
Windows. For all the hard work of many people who have contributed
libraries and code, it still impossible to write full blown
commercial quality windows apps.
I don't mean that with any disrespect but the fact that Euphoria doesn't
come
with a Windows IDE and no Windows GUI tools and no way to access
data outside of Euphoria (except the MySQL wrapper??) ... means it by itself
is useless for windows programming. In time these holes will be filled
by user libraries but until then all we can do is help with the guys (and
gals!)
doing all the work (or look at writing alternatives). If (and maybe when)
these
projects are completed it would seem reasonable for their authors to receive
some
kind of financial benefit, especially considering it will financially reward
RDS in
time. Anyone who has been involved with any kind of software development
will understand the amazing amount of effort required to produce good
quality products.
I should say the Micro economy is RDS's approach of rewarding user
contributions ..
and for the smaller projects I think it has its merit ... but for larger
projects I think
something else is required.
> I agree wholeheartly, except for the Payment part.
> I don't see Robert paying dozens of people that
> contribute to Euphoria, he'd even ask YOU to pay for
> him to release his source. He could however give free
> Euphoria copies to all contributors, but that's the
> limit of his generosity.
I imagine most people who are able to write the quality of
software required would be registered anyway.
I don't think it is unreasonable to think if someone wrote a
good quality IDE or GUI toolkit that Rob shouldn't offer them
money for it and add it to the base distribution.
I think a more achievable aim might be for Rob to offer that
product (eg an IDE) for sale using his resources as a seperate
product or as an add-on product. Then the author just shares
a percentage of the sales with RDS and RDS doesn't need to
fork out any up front capital. Again with maybe a cut down
version available for free. This way the current small size and
inexpsenive Euphoria can remain with optional add on products.
It obviously depends on two things ... if Rob is interested and
if anyone out their has the time, effort, resources and knowledge
to complete such projects.
I trully beleive this idea or some variation of it should be considered
by Rob. I think the one man show that is Euphoria has shown and will
continue to show that it can't deliver the functionality required to be a
general purpose programming environment (especially in Windows).
You can compare Euphoria to Visual Basic to Delphi to C++ ... whatever
language you want ... their just aren't the tools available to produce
good quality Windows software. What Euphoria is, is like Visual Basic
or Delphi without the IDE's, debuggers, GUI tools, and dozens of other
libraries
that are packaged with these products. If you removed all that from Visual
Basic
it would be small fast and "almost" as sexy!
I guess all my rambling comes down to the fact that Rob should consider
some ways of increasing the coders developing Euphoria. I think power
users writing some good quaility libraries would be a good start.
As an example if Rob said to me, I'll give you X dollars or Y% of sales
for writing a quaility ODBC interface I'd seriously consider it.
Even though I know nothing of it, I might buy a book, read MSDN or
something but it would be a major challange with a possibly a nice
reward.
I might say ... give me a few weeks to investigate the possiblity and
I'll get back to you. I would write a small prototype as proof of concept
and then discuss further with RDS.
( Don't ask me Rob as ODBC doesn't interest me that much!!! :) )
I guess that also brings me back to that list of features survey I
mentioned,
if 100 people said they would pay $15 for an IDE I'm sure a few people
would consider putting some more effort in!
I'm also sure not everyone who said they would pay would actually buy it,
and the amount of effort required to complete such a project wouln't mean
you'd
quit your day job ... but it would still be an incentive.
Anyway it's late and I'll probably read this tomorrow and think what a load
of crap
was I going on about last night!!! ( buy maybe not )
Ray Smith
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