[freesci-develop] Glutton OS X sound support & wrapper for FreeSCI, was: Concerning C416: No sound on Mac OS X

[Matt]

> > The new (and, to a lesser extent, the old) sound kernel are supposed 
> > to
> > be reasonably portable, so don't worry about this too much-- an SDL 
> > sound
> > driver will appear sooner or later anyway (assuming that _someone_ 
> > works
> > on FreeSCI sound, that is).
> Well I plan on working on the OS X version in December (when I have a 
> winter break) and if the SDL driver isn't already implemented in 
> glutton, I'll write it myself.

I like SDL, was  there any other similar multi-platform graphic module 
considered for Glutton or is SDL kinda seen as a standard?
It would be nice to get SDL working again for Glutton if its still 
being considered, I doubt Glutton will give any output right now for OS 
X.

> > > Specifically I was contemplating creating a Core Audio driver for 
> > > sound
> > > output, although if possible I wouldn't mind just using a SDL (or
> > > SDLMixer) driver in order to keep the code as portable as possible.
> > The new (and, to a lesser extent, the old) sound kernel are supposed 
> > to
> > be reasonably portable, so don't worry about this too much-- an SDL 
> > sound

Well, there are several different flavors if you want to support audio 
for OS X. You could either go for using Carbon (as SDL does right now), 
use Cocoa (NSSound) or use HAL directly (which should resemble a lot 
like Carbon calls).
If SDL sound support is being considered it might be the most useful to 
use SDL anyway for sound and start converting the sound support in SDL 
to Cocoa or HAL.

> What work do you plan on doing for OS X? Specifically I had plans of 
> releasing a double clickable SDL version during my winter vacation 
> that was similar to ScummVM's quality... I was only waiting because I 
> wanted Glutton to become more stable.
> > At one point, I actually tried to make it drag&drop-startable (drag an
> > SCI game directory on top of FreeSCI and it will work), but I couldn't
> Actually, I know how that works in OS X and I could implement it. 
> Never tried a whole directory however, so I'd have to look into it a 
> bit, but it should be the same procedure. I think the key is that 
> creator of a folder is "MACS" and the type is "fold". Of course that 
> is through Carbon so I'm not sure if it's possible directly in Cocoa. 
> But I plan on doing this this winter so no need to handle it unless 
> you want it earlier.

Cocoa is your friend (for sure in winter;), check out 
prepareForDragOperation, performDragOperation and 
concludeDragOperation, I bet the dragging is easier with Cocoa, it just 
takes some time to get used to its standard.
Carbon tows a lot of OS 9 with it which you do not care for in this 
case, also just having finished some work with task control under 
Cocoa, its very easy as Cocoa was written with calling unix utilities 
in mind.

And yes, also I had such a FreeSCI wrapper in mind, however since you 
are already preparing for it in the winter you should go ahead with it.
I had a very basic and small FreeSCI wrapper in an user friendly disk 
image in mind to help promoting FreeSCI / SDL in the OS X community.
Nothing fancy just basic functionality as I am not sure if there are 
many Sierra enthusiast on the OS X platform.
I would still like to see such a thing right now for FreeSCI 0.3.4, 
making something complex might not be needed if there is not much 
request for it.
Based on the response you could expand or keep it small.
Slowly starting to understand the Mac community preferably there should 
be a demo with the wrapper, else you will just a thousand questions 
back.
Let me know if you want to go for something nice for Glutton, I (or us 
together) could probably wrap something up fast for FreeSCI.

Since you are talking about multiple fixes that you were submitting, do 
you maybe have a fix for that darn cursor bug that OS X seems to have?
My cursor is fragmented, so basically a line, then an empty (see 
through) line, then a line again, after which a see through line, and 
so on (kind of like the video in Wing Commander 3 and 4).

Also, would the performance for the adlibemu be better with (real) 
sound cards instead if the basic Apple soundcards? The only card I find 
that has OS X support is the Revolution 7.1 but it does not have midi 
channels.
I was hoping to get real midi through my soundblaster live but it seems 
Creative dropped OS X support. Searching over the internet it looks 
like the soundblaster cards are the only sound cards left with midi 
channel support.

Matt