Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/05/14/03:32:58
In article <EA1KEC DOT 8LJ AT world DOT std DOT com>, <tob AT world DOT std DOT com> wrote:
>OK, the suggested possibilities are:
>
> [...]
>
> Someone volunteers to host an Allegro-specific mailing list.
>
> - Who?
>
> - Less easy to find than a newsgroup. Expect a good deal of
> Allegro traffic to remain on c.o.m.d.
This may not be so if future versions of the Allegro documentation mention
the list.
> - Newsgroups are generally more convenient than mail,
> because you can pace yourself freely and topic-select
> better.
- Mailing lists fill your e-mail box, and unless you have some
mechanism of sorting incoming e-mail, mailing-list mail gets mixed with your
personal mail.
> + Less spam.
Only if we can prevent spammers from finding out how to post to the list.
> Newgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp.games.
> Newgroup alt.os.msdos.djgpp.games.
> Newgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp.allegro.
> Newgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp.allegro.
^^^^
(I assume you meant 'alt')
As Allegro is more than just a games programming library, it might be a good
idea to create a newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp.libraries. This will discuss
other libraries as well as Allegro.
If you want an Allegro-specific newsgroup, don't place it under the DJGPP
hierarchy, as Allegro will soon be ported to Linux.
May I reccomend an Allegro group to be called: "comp.api.allegro" (or
"alt.comp.api.allegro").
Another idea:
Anyone posting a message to this newsgroup/mailing-list that's allegro-related
and not DJGPP related could make sure that the subject line contains
'*ALLEGRO*', and people who don't want to gear about Allegro could make use
of killfiles. Personally, I don't like this idea because not everyone can
use a killfile, and I think this could be a serious breach of Netiquette.
The original idea behind DJGPP was to create an environment under DOS for
compiling and running software that was written for UNIX (most of the people
who dislike Allegro-related threads probarbly use DJGPP for this purpose).
However in practice, it turned out that the gcc/gxx portion of DJGPP became
the only good quality protected-mode 32-bit c/c++ freeware compiler available
for DOS.
As a result of both the quality and the fact it's freeware, DJGPP has been used
to make games ranging from amateur-level to Quake. With the Allegro library,
even more game-programmers are attracted to DJGPP. In fact, there's many
DOS game-programming sites out there that reccommend you use DJGPP and Allegro
if you want to become a DOS game-programmer.
I predict that Allegro users will be the fastest growing part of the DJGPP
user-base, because Allegro is the most versatile PC hardware library available
for DJGPP. The DJGPP/Allegro combination is the breeding ground of many a
professional games-programmer to come. At first, people want to just get on
with programming games without the hassle of the PC's hardware, and then, as
they want to expand Allegro's functionality, they learn about the Hardware,
and Allegro gets bigger as their extensions get added. I think I might even
go as far as to call Allegro "The People's game programming library". Have
you seen how long the list of contributors is?
It was mentioned that there was an average of 12 Allegro-related posts a day.
I think that that's enough to start a newsgroup. Also, some people are
reluctant to start an Allegro-related thread because it would be too off-topic
for this group. It would be a good place to discuss additions to Allegro
(such as the best method of implementing sprites with transparent backgrounds
in truecolour-modes), and people could post their queries to this group
instead of mailing Shawn.
If a seperate Allegro (or even a djgpp.libraries) newsgroup isn't created, this
newsgroup will forever be doomed with off-topic allegro-related threads (and
even some non-Allegro games/graphics threads based on some of Allegro's
functions).
Also, bear in mind that comp.os.msdos.djgpp is a mailing list as well as a
newsgroup, which means that if you've subscribed to the mailinglist, you get
all the postings from the newsgroup, including the ones you don't like.
AE.
--
Andrei Ellman -- URL: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ellman/ae-a -- ae1 AT york DOT ac DOT uk
"All I wanna do is have some fun :-) || ae-a AT minster DOT york DOT ac DOT uk
I've got the feeling I'm not the only one" || mailto:ellman AT xs4all DOT nl
-- Sheryl Crow :-) || It's what you make of it.
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