Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/02/25/19:15:45
Paul Derbyshire writes:
>I have today discovered two very SEVERE BUGS in ALLEGRO that manifest
>themselves when the SOUND features are used.
Wow. I have to say, your post leaves an ugly taste in my mouth. Not
because you are criticising my code (bug reports from users are
absolutely essential, and I'm normally delighted to be informed of any
problems that people are having), but because of your unpleasant and
confrontational attitude. I came very close to consigning your message
straight to the trash can (I don't like flame wars, so I have a policy
of not responding to any posts that make me feel personal animosity
towards the writer), but in the interests of getting these troubles
fixed, I'm willing to investigate your problems a bit further...
>SEVERE BUG #1: After running an Allegro program that executes a
>play_sample at some point, then returning to DOS, if you then run another
>DOS program that uses sound, e.g. the test-sbc program that comes with a
>creative labs soundblaster, the result is a squawk from the soundcard and
>a system hang.
This is very probably a bug. I need a bit more info from you, though, in
particular:
What soundcard do you have? Model, irq number, dma channel, etc...
What is your BLASTER environment variable set to?
Which sound driver is Allegro using? (displayed by play.exe)
Does the problem happen if you only use the MIDI sound, or only the
digital sound, or can either cause it?
Does the problem occur when you re-run the Allegro program, or only when
you run other (eg. creative labs) code?
Does the same thing happen with any Allegro programs (demo.exe,
play.exe, etc), or do the effects differ depending on which program you
ran?
Are you running under win95, or clean DOS?
>SEVERE BUG #2: load_sample always returns NULL, even if the string it is
>sent as parameter is the fille name of a mono WAV exactly as per
What version of Allegro is this? Up until version 2.2, there were some
problems with the WAV parser (it only understood a small subset of the
RIFF format, and didn't like the samples produced by win95 utilities).
If you have an earlier Allegro version, get 2.2 from my web page and see
if that clears the trouble up. If you already have 2.2, please send me
one of the WAV's that you can't read, and I'll investigate further...
>I cannot imagine that either of these two bugs could have gone completely
>undiscovered. There is no way you didn't know about these when you
>released the version of allegro I'm using. Yet the documentation makes no
I can't remember who it was that said "never attribute to malice what
can be adequately explained by stupidity", but it's a very true
statement :-) Did it never occur to you that I might actually have
tested this code, and that the reason I didn't notice these problems was
that they don't occur on my machine?
FYI, I have tested the sound routines thoroughly on four different
systems, which is all I have access to. I think they are quite stable,
but that doesn't mean they will work perfectly on every possible
hardware configuration. If your system is demonstrating a problem, it
needs to be fixed, but this is not the result of stupidity or malice on
my part.
Re. the WAV reading code, there was a major problem with the version
from Allegro 2.11, which I never noticed because at that point I only
had access to Windows 3.1, and my code worked with all the samples
produced by that OS. Several people pointed out the problem in a helpful
and polite manner, and I think (hope) that I've now managed to fix it.
>I would like to see a new version that definitely has NEITHER of these
>bugs somewhere I can get them within 24 hours.
And since when have you had any right to demand things from me? Unless
I'm missing something, you have yet to give me anything in exchange for
Allegro, which places your right to set me tasks and completion
deadlines somewhere a long way below zero.
>I am 100% sure that in the time that has passed since you wrote
>the bug-ridden beta-like version I have now, you have had enough time to
>track these bugs down, and make a new version that a) has a load_sample
Do you have any idea how much time I've spent working on Allegro? Do you
realise that I have a full time job, which keeps me busy from 9am to
6pm, five days a week? The work I do on Allegro comes out of my valuable
evenings and weekends, and it is your good fortune that I've chosen to
make it freely available for you to use.
If you run into any problems with Allegro, you have three options:
- Fix them. The source is available: use it!
- Tell me about them. Because I want to make the best lib I can, I will
try to repair them, and because I'm a helpful sort of person, I am
normally happy to answer whatever questions you might have. But that's
purely a favour from me to you: unless you pay me for my work, you
have absolutely no right to demand anything from me.
- Go away and stop using my code :-)
/*
* Shawn Hargreaves - shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/
* Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament.
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