--- Pradeepto Bhattacharya wrote:

   [Don't mean to hijack this thread]

:)

      I started searching for svga and what not.

I used to be running Win98 those days btw. So I bumped into two libraries - Zephyr and Allegro ( * ). Both could do what I wanted - nice gfx routines in svga. Allegro is a Game Programming Lib. Allegro was more community based and had GUI routines even. I fell in love with it. It was/is a "giftware" started as a hobby project by a dude called Shawn Hargreaves (typo?). He was the Linus for us Allegro fanboys. SDL was BSD for us, we loved to make fun of it :P.

Umm, interesting.

        ( * ) I also found another library

around this time - called as Qt - I thought it was foobar because it used C++ :O and I chucked it.

But now, you are /completely/ into it, isn't it?

      The best part about Allegro was its

community. There is this forum site, www.allegro.cc. Loads of helpful people there. For a long time, I was the only Indian there, iirc, then there were few more here and there. I suggest, you join Allegro.cc if you are interested in Game Development. I have long stopped doing anything in Allegro since 3-4 years now, around the same time since I started using that library that I had chucked few years back :)

I'm not particularly interested in game programming. A few of my friends are. However, they aren't probably aware of allegro. I think, I must introduce them to it.

       Try and play with Allegro to learn a lot

of gfx routines, I suggest.

I have installed Allegro libraries (4.1). Though I can find the documentation, the API documentation isn't accessible over the internet and isn't available within the docs. Though there are man pages for each function of the library, I'm keen to know the list of _all_ functions offered by the library. For example, I can search function offered by svgalib with man svgalib.

I cannot do the same with allegro. My search is on, but in the meantime, if you recall, please post it.

BTW, thanks for this email. It is always great pleasure to learn something from members of this list. :)

-- FSF of India Associate Fellow - http://www.gnu.org.in

Why delete messages? Unlimited storage is just a click away. Go to http://help.yahoo.com/l/in/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/tools/tools-08.html

Hi.

If you guys have the time and inclination then do give a thought to the animated desktop idea. It is aimed at senior citizens and other freshers who are too scared to go near a computer.

It will have big animated icons that resemble actual items used and tasks performed in daily life. For example to write a letter, there is an icon of a beautiful letter pad with pages flapping. The helping hand then turns into a pen that moves across characters as they are typed, to give an impression of a hand doing the writing. To change the font, a side button called 'writing styles' is used. On tapping that button, a magnified window of a sample letter opens up and a full paragraph of test text with that font is shown on the screen. After the letter is typed, it is either printed or the 'mail it' option is selected. The 'mail it' option makes the letter fold itself into an envelope. To post the letter, the receiving party's email address is typed on the envelope. A helping hand then posts it into a red post box. A uniformed postman then declares any errors if the smtp threw errors. To receive mail, the helping hand checks the letter box icon and if mail is received, it drops down like closed envelopes into a tray or bag.

The entire system can be a talking and animated one like a friendly male or female assistant helping out the senior citizen. It can be made in different languages. Nowadays, I see a lot of flash animation with audio and video and its very slim and trim on the memory. So something like that can be developed.

On Mon, 2007-08-06 at 23:17 +0530, Pradeepto Bhattacharya wrote:

      Roshan dude, this feels like deja-vu or something to me.

Many years ago, I was searching for a lib that could do "1024x800" or atleast "800x600" since I could never get TC++ graphics.lib/drivers to work at higher than 640x480. And I wanted to create some GUI foo for some trivial civil engineering software that I had written so that 2nd year CE students didnot have to do some thousand calculations :P. First version was using gotoxy, next one using BGI. But then 640x480 really sucked after a point.

wow :)

      I started searching for svga and what not. I used to be

running Win98 those days btw. So I bumped into two libraries - Zephyr and Allegro ( * ). Both could do what I wanted - nice gfx routines in svga. Allegro is a Game Programming Lib. Allegro was more community based and had GUI routines even. I fell in love with it. It was/is a "giftware" started as a hobby project by a dude called Shawn Hargreaves (typo?). He was the Linus for us Allegro fanboys. SDL was BSD for us, we loved to make fun of it :P.

wow wow :P

      Anyways, I stuck with Allegro for a long long time. I learnt

a lot while using it. I learnt that TC++ was the not the only compiler in the world, since Allegro needed something called DJGPP which apparently was a DOS port of some random compiler called gcc :O. Also learnt that there was something called MingW - Windows port of gcc. My Civil Engg. software was re-done using Allegro.

      The best part about Allegro was its community. There is this

forum site, www.allegro.cc. Loads of helpful people there. For a long

totally agreed :P

one of the reasons I completely moved to Linux was allegro. I worked with allegro for some time on windows but then when the new version came out, it wouldn't compile. I tried tried tried and then simply got fed up. Rebooted my machine in Redhat 9 and tried compiling. Bam! It compiled flawlessly :) Along with allegro, I used this TTF library whose name I can't remember now :(

Anyway, 'twas a long time ago! :)

Hi,

On 8/8/07, Dinesh Joshi dinesh.a.joshi@gmail.com wrote:

...

year CE students didnot have to do some thousand calculations :P. First version was using gotoxy, next one using BGI. But then 640x480 really sucked after a point.

wow :)

Nah, not much really but the effort I took those days were much more than these days. It was probably an escape route for me or something when I was supposed to something else ;)

...

      The best part about Allegro was its community. There is this

forum site, www.allegro.cc. Loads of helpful people there. For a long

totally agreed :P

Didn't know that you were there. Never saw you there or remember you from my forum days. Only Indians I remember are - Deepak T and one dude from BITS Pilani whose nick was "guilt". Probably you came after I left.

one of the reasons I completely moved to Linux was allegro. I worked with allegro for some time on windows but then when the new version came out, it wouldn't compile. I tried tried tried and then simply got fed

Really? Never had any problems on Windows. I hardly ever programmed anything with Allegro on Linux. At the most, I just built or probably just installed the package on Linux because I was getting bored or something. Whatever worthwhile Allegro stuff I did was all on Windows 98, probabably a very little bit on Win2K.

Anyway, 'twas a long time ago! :)

Yups, but I am thinking of going back there, may in some time. :)

Pradeepto