[Openal-devel] More ALUT formats

[Jason Daly]

Chris Robinson wrote:
> Maybe. But it seems a bit wasteful to make a seperate lib/API to do what ALUT
> already does. Creating a new API for loading files for OpenAL would just
> duplicate the work ALUT has already done, and just create another dependancy
> for apps assuming they're using alutInit/alutExit/alutSleep/etc for their own
> purposes. It's simply extending the functionality ALUT's intended to have.
> The only real problem is just reporting the supported formats, as the
> mimetype list isn't very friendly.
>   

As long as adding the new file formats doesn't make ALUT more complex to 
build and use, I'm OK with it.  If adding support for Vorbis makes the 
average Windows developer have to deal with compiling and linking with 
libvorbis (even if he doesn't care about Vorbis support), I don't think 
it's a good idea.  If it can be added without that extra complexity, I'm 
OK with it.

I'd say just keep in mind that the first time anyone uses OpenAL, 
they'll probably also be using ALUT.  ALUT can't give a bad first 
impression if we want OpenAL to succeed.


> I mean the internals, that aren't exposed to apps. As far as apps would be
> concerned it'd behave exactly the same, but the internal workings would just
> do it a bit differently.
>   

Oh, OK.  It sounded like you wanted to change the API to make it more 
amenable to doing streaming with different formats.

I don't have a problem with internal changes, as long as it works as 
well or better when you're done with it :-)  Of course, I didn't write 
it, so I don't have much of a stake in the existing code...


--"J"