New member intro and some questions

Hi all. Let me first introduce myself. my name is jaffar and I am a qualified blind freelance software developer and software engineer from Singapore. I am nuts about the the c and c++ programming language and view all other programming languages as, well, not there yet.
Anyways, fanaticism aside, I have just recently discovered SDL, and the most amazing discovery I?ve made is that What time it took me to achieve programming an app with microsoft?s DirectX was halved when I started using SDL. However, I still have some concerns, owing to the fact that I am a relative stranger to sdl, and not because i doubt it?s intutiveness and ease of use but because i am thinking of totally migrating my current game project to sdl. So, my first and immediate concern is: how well does sdl handle 3d graphics and 3d sounds. Secondly, while i know that sdl can be relatively easy to plug into OpenGL which i personally find to be not that intutive to use, what other SDKS can i plug sdl into? I am thinking here of DirectX because if Sdl can be plugged into it, then DirectX itself will be very usable through sdl, won?t it? Of course DirectX is not a means to an end, and if there are other game sdks i can use, then so much the better for portability to other systems. Also, I am wondering if sdl can be made to be accessible, meaning that blind computer users and gamers can input text and interact using their screen readers as normal with games or applications written with sdl. As far as I have tried it, The basic SDL window is accessible enough, but I haven?t yet ventured into more complcated UI development with it to make a judgement.
Thanks for any opinions and help on this matter. Looking forward to contribute to the list. Cheers!
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Hi Jaffar, welcome to the SDL mailing list!

You came to SDL at an interesting time because we are somewhere in the
midst of becoming a community development project, so again, welcome aboard.

Even though SDL is a library for games, it is still very low level, meaning
that it doesn’t handle any sort of 3d graphics or 3d sounds on it’s own
(however, this may or may not change?), however, most people migrate
towards OpenGL for 3d, and there are many options for sound (OpenAL, bass,
fmod).

If I recall correctly, I don’t think SDL officially supports DirectX, but
that’s something Sam or Ryan would know if it’s possible and how to do it.

And as far as accessibility is concerned, SDL doesn’t inherently deal with
that, but I’m sure you could find some sort of library to use alongside SDL
for that.

Take care, and again, welcome :slight_smile:
-AlexOn Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 7:47 AM, <jaffar.sidek10 at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all. Let me first introduce myself. my name is jaffar and I am a
qualified blind freelance software developer and software engineer from
Singapore. I am nuts about the the c and c++ programming language and view
all other programming languages as, well, not there yet. [image: Smile]
Anyways, fanaticism aside, I have just recently discovered SDL, and the
most amazing discovery I?ve made is that What time it took me to achieve
programming an app with microsoft?s DirectX was halved when I started using
SDL. However, I still have some concerns, owing to the fact that I am a
relative stranger to sdl, and not because i doubt it?s intutiveness and
ease of use but because i am thinking of totally migrating my current game
project to sdl. So, my first and immediate concern is: how well does sdl
handle 3d graphics and 3d sounds. Secondly, while i know that sdl can be
relatively easy to plug into OpenGL which i personally find to be not that
intutive to use, what other SDKS can i plug sdl into? I am thinking here of
DirectX because if Sdl can be plugged into it, then DirectX itself will be
very usable through sdl, won?t it? Of course DirectX is not a means to an
end, and if there are other game sdks i can use, then so much the better
for portability to other systems. Also, I am wondering if sdl can be made
to be accessible, meaning that blind computer users and gamers can input
text and interact using their screen readers as normal with games or
applications written with sdl. As far as I have tried it, The basic SDL
window is accessible enough, but I haven?t yet ventured into more
complcated UI development with it to make a judgement.
Thanks for any opinions and help on this matter. Looking forward to
contribute to the list. Cheers!


SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org

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jaffar.sidek10 at gmail.com:

[…]

so much the better for portability to other systems. Also, I am
wondering if sdl can be made to be accessible, meaning that blind
computer users and gamers can input text and interact using their
screen readers as normal with games or applications written with
sdl. As far as I have tried it, The basic SDL window is accessible
enough, but I haven?t yet ventured into more complcated UI
development with it to make a judgement.

Years ago I implemented a wrapper around MSAA and ATK (an accessibility
interface for POSIX-based platforms) for arbitrary objects using Python.
If you stick to C++ it should not be too hard to utilise certain portions
of the code (at least the MSAA stuff) to encapsulate your own objects.

This would allow you to stay independent from the underlying SDK, be it
DirectX or OpenGL or whatever and still use SDL. The code can be found at

http://ocemp.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ocemp/trunk/papi/src/msaa/

Cheers
Marcus