[Openal] AL 1.1 SDK and Installer for Windows

[Ed Phillips]

Hi,

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, Stephen J Baker wrote:

> I've worked with those guys - and you are precisely correct. /usr/include
> is heavily policed - you can't just toss any old files in there.  When
> the OpenGL standards-base project worked through this, we had people from
> the applications world, the library world and the distro world and it was
> quite evident that the only thing that was gonna fly was:
>
>   /usr/include/GL/gl.h
>
> There is also the argument for symmetry with OpenGL.  All OpenGL apps
> have:
>
> #include <GL/gl.h>
>
> ...it would seem weird not to have:
>
> #include <AL/al.h>
>
> ...on the very next line!

Exactly... and if we're gonna write (or already have) source code that 
uses:

#include <AL/al.h>
#include <AL/alc.h>

...on some platform, wouldn't it be nice for that to work on every 
platform supported by OpenAL?  The Windows platform is particularly 
flexible (no directory full of includes files to contend with)... Linux is 
not.  OpenAL developers might actually care about this if they want to 
have OpenAL become a "core package" that is fully accepted and distributed 
with every Linux distribution out there by default.  It's a matter of 
choice on Windows... and it doesn't really matter either way, but 
*consistency* wins for this sort of thing, in my book.  It would be a 
"standard" that doesn't really cost much.

The Windows installer could create an "include" folder with the 1.1 header 
files, and create an "include\AL" folder that *also* has the header files 
(or shortcuts or whatever) and avoid the whole issue of "#include" 
compatibility anyway.  Then the user doesn't have to "muck around" with 
the installation, have files hanging around when they uninstall and 
install a new version, and all the other Windows-specific nonsense.

Cheers,

 	Ed

Ed Phillips <ed at udel.edu> University of Delaware (302) 831-6082
Systems Programmer III, Network and Systems Services