[Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[isaac gouy]

Say I'm developing software on MS Windows for
deployment on MS Windows.

Is anybody else doing this with OCaml?

Would this be a silly thing to do, because I wouldn't
have access to the full set of OCaml development
tools?

best wishes, Isaac

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[SooHyoung Oh]

What sort of software are you developing?
If you are developing one with GUI, it's good to use lablgtk.
It works fine on Windows, too.

---
SooHyoung Oh
http://www.duonix.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "isaac gouy" <igouy@yahoo.com>
To: <caml-list@inria.fr>
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 6:23 AM
Subject: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise


> Say I'm developing software on MS Windows for
> deployment on MS Windows.
>
> Is anybody else doing this with OCaml?
>
> Would this be a silly thing to do, because I wouldn't
> have access to the full set of OCaml development
> tools?
>
> best wishes, Isaac
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now
> http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[achrist]

Nicolas Cannasse wrote:
> 
> > Say I'm developing software on MS Windows for
> > deployment on MS Windows.
> >
> > Is anybody else doing this with OCaml?
> 
> Yes, some people are doing it ( including myself )
> 
> > Would this be a silly thing to do, because I wouldn't
> > have access to the full set of OCaml development
> > tools?
> 
> Silly ? Not at all.
> Currently the only really missing tool is the ocaml debugger ( for the MSVC
> build ), but you can live without it.
> The main problem for you is that you'll find less people being able to
> answer you if you have win32-specific ocaml problems.
> 

I'd like to do GUI and other interfaces with one of the Windows RAD
tools (e.g. Delphi) that is well-developed for such things and do 
back-end algorithms in OCaml.  For this to work the Windows way,
the OCaml should probably be packaged as a COM server or DLL.  Is
anyone doing this with good success?  Any details on how would be
welcome.

TIA


Al
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Nicolas Cannasse]

> Say I'm developing software on MS Windows for
> deployment on MS Windows.
>
> Is anybody else doing this with OCaml?

Yes, some people are doing it ( including myself )

> Would this be a silly thing to do, because I wouldn't
> have access to the full set of OCaml development
> tools?

Silly ? Not at all.
Currently the only really missing tool is the ocaml debugger ( for the MSVC
build ), but you can live without it.
The main problem for you is that you'll find less people being able to
answer you if you have win32-specific ocaml problems.

Nicolas Cannasse

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Eric Mangold]

achrist@easystreet.com wrote:

>I'd like to do GUI and other interfaces with one of the Windows RAD
>tools (e.g. Delphi) that is well-developed for such things and do 
>back-end algorithms in OCaml.
>
Sorry I don't have any suggestions for Delphi or COM.

Personally, I would do the GUI and everything else (optimize later, if 
needed) in Python (works great on Windows), GUI toolkits include Tkinter 
(ugly, and missing some good widgets, though add-ons are available), 
WxPython (wrapper around WxWindows, fully-featured, though a bit overly 
complicated with a big memory footprint), PyGTK (Yes it runs on Windows, 
fast and featureful, not sure about stability),  PyQt (stable, native 
look'n'feel, fast, featureful, "free" and commercial versions 
available), those are the biggest ones, though there are a few others.

The only thing I'm not sure about is interfacing with OCaml.  SWIG has 
good Python support, and it also claims Ocaml support, so that's 
something to check out.

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Nicolas Cannasse]

> I'd like to do GUI and other interfaces with one of the Windows RAD
> tools (e.g. Delphi) that is well-developed for such things and do
> back-end algorithms in OCaml.  For this to work the Windows way,
> the OCaml should probably be packaged as a COM server or DLL.  Is
> anyone doing this with good success?  Any details on how would be
> welcome.

You should perhaps consider packaging your Delphi GUI into a DLL with
exported function and then have the OCaml Runtime be your startup. It seems
easier because of the following :

- if you want an ocaml interpreter, you have to link your Delphi with the
ocamlrun.lib file, which is a MSVC one so not compatible with Borland
compiler and linker : you need to rebuild it with Borland tools and nobody
seems to have already done it

- there was some issues in 3.05 when you wanted to have a C "custom"
application running ocaml bytecode which was using a C DLL ( because the DLL
was calling OCaml C API function from ocamlrun.exe, which wasn't your main
interpreter ). I haven't check if this is resolved by the usage of
ocamlrun.dll in 3.06

Nicolas Cannasse

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[achrist]

Nicolas Cannasse wrote:
> 
> You should perhaps consider packaging your Delphi GUI into a DLL with
> exported function and then have the OCaml Runtime be your startup. 

This is the problem with many of the non-mainstream languages.  
Compatible with ... is the the assertion, but the but is 'as long
as I get to be on top.'  With a GUI application, it is far more
natural (ie ignorant of other architectural possibilities, it seems
to me to be an easy choice) to have the user in charge, ie the user
as the client, and to have the various services (algorithms, databases, 
etc) in servers fulfilling whatever requests the user hurls in through
the GUI.  This design seems right because, with this type of design,
the servers can be de-coupled from the UI and can serve through the
GUI or through any of various other kinds of clients that we might
create.

With a fancy user-centric GUI in a DLL called from the OCaml runtime,
we've got 2-way coupling through some kind of callbacks (don't we? How
would that work?), and that's 1 more way than we really need.  IIRC,
coupling is bad.  An alternative is to have the server be a separate
executable and to have the client just pipe data through it using stdin,
stdout, or various files.  But the overhead of starting and waiting on
an exe makes this somewhat unattractive if the services are not fairly
coarse-grained.  

Your idea is a good one if the GUI is not user-centric.  For example, 
the so-called 'wizard' applications are task-centric, where there is
a predefined sequence of inputs required to complete a task and the
user gets led through the steps page-by-page or screen-by-screen. I
suppose that this kind of GUI could be rolled into a DLL that worked
well without callbacks.  But a system that relied on that style 
excessively would not be one that users liked.  I think that this 
issue is part of a larger culture clash between the unix/linus and
Windows/GUI worlds.  A strength of Unix/linux is that it offers many
small, reliable, single-function programs.  Windows succeeds by giving
the user the feeling/illusion of control, letting them pick from many
options at every turn, open and close Windows willy-nilly,  etc, etc.
This is a lot for OCaml to take in.

> It  seems easier because of the following :
> 
> - if you want an ocaml interpreter, you have to link your Delphi with 

Don't want an interpreter.  

Last I saw, COM was one of the best things that MS had conceived. 
That's extremely faint praise, but COM does look to be a good way to
partition a system into cohesive parts. With Windows as it currently
exists, being able to do COM as both a client and a server would be
a very nice feature for just about any language that targets Windows.

IDK if MS is going to de-emphasize COM and steer us toward building
systems out of .Net components that talk SOAP. Is SOAP a viable and
competitive alternative to COM for creating servers/services with
OCaml under MS-Windows?


Al
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[jeanmarc.eber]

Quoting achrist@easystreet.com: 
 
> IDK if MS is going to de-emphasize COM and steer us toward building 
> systems out of .Net components that talk SOAP. Is SOAP a viable and 
> competitive alternative to COM for creating servers/services with 
> OCaml under MS-Windows? 
>  
> 
 
have a look at 
 
http://caml.inria.fr/ocaml-soap 
 
Jean-Marc Eber 
 
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Xavier Leroy]

> > You should perhaps consider packaging your Delphi GUI into a DLL with
> > exported function and then have the OCaml Runtime be your startup. 
> 
> This is the problem with many of the non-mainstream languages.  [...]

Don't worry, it's actually possible to package Caml code + the Caml
runtime system in a DLL, thus having the Delphi GUI as "main" program.

CamlIDL (see below) contains a tool that builds such a DLL in the case
of a COM component.

> Last I saw, COM was one of the best things that MS had conceived. 
> That's extremely faint praise, but COM does look to be a good way to
> partition a system into cohesive parts. With Windows as it currently
> exists, being able to do COM as both a client and a server would be
> a very nice feature for just about any language that targets Windows.

Agreed.  Please have a look at http://caml.inria.fr/camlidl/

- Xavier Leroy
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[achrist]

Xavier Leroy wrote:
> 
> > > You should perhaps consider packaging your Delphi GUI into a DLL with
> > > exported function and then have the OCaml Runtime be your startup.
> >
> > This is the problem with many of the non-mainstream languages.  [...]
> 
> Don't worry, it's actually possible to package Caml code + the Caml
> runtime system in a DLL, thus having the Delphi GUI as "main" program.
> 
> CamlIDL (see below) contains a tool that builds such a DLL in the case
> of a COM component.
> 
> > Last I saw, COM was one of the best things that MS had conceived.
> > That's extremely faint praise, but COM does look to be a good way to
> > partition a system into cohesive parts. With Windows as it currently
> > exists, being able to do COM as both a client and a server would be
> > a very nice feature for just about any language that targets Windows.
> 
> Agreed.  Please have a look at http://caml.inria.fr/camlidl/
> 

Thanks.  I'll have to give this a try.  I took a look at it a while
back and saw that there was C code to translate between OCaml types 
and C types.  I didn't go very much farther, because I didn't want
to mess with a 3-language solution, Delphi <-> C <-> OCaml, which
could be way too much work for me.  Reading a little more of the
docs today, I see that the C code gets automatically generated and
that there is a tool to link it into the server automatically as well,
so my previous negative impression was likely ill-conceived.   

Can't wait to get time to give this a try.  While I'm waiting, back
to the original theme of this thread.  Can anyone offer tales of 
(impressive) success or gotchas doing such things under Windows
with OCaml?


Al
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 06:41:52PM -0000, Nicolas Cannasse wrote:
> > Can't wait to get time to give this a try.  While I'm waiting, back
> > to the original theme of this thread.  Can anyone offer tales of
> > (impressive) success or gotchas doing such things under Windows
> > with OCaml?
> 
> I wrote the Osiris library, a native Win32 GUI 100% OCaml which is built on
> top of the OCaml Win32 API . This enable you to easily create and manipulate
> GUI components ( as easy as Borland VCL but still incomplete ). Then I wrote
> and XML toplevel so that you can write your interface in xml ( this took me
> only two days, and the result is far more readable that any C equivalent
> would have been ). This done, I created a tool called "Dragoon3" which was
> designed to be a multi user resources sharing platform for the 3D game my
> company was planning : Virtual file system, duplicate data stored in DB,
> check in & out, and plugins enable.... all in Ocaml. Then I finally wrote
> the 3D Engine for the game ( DirectX based ) and interfaced it with OCaml so
> I could instanciate and manipulate 3D objects with it.
> 
> The results have been very good :  2x speedup in development process,
> shorter code : easier to maintain, and great perfs.

But windows only :(((

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Nicolas Cannasse]

> Can't wait to get time to give this a try.  While I'm waiting, back
> to the original theme of this thread.  Can anyone offer tales of
> (impressive) success or gotchas doing such things under Windows
> with OCaml?

I wrote the Osiris library, a native Win32 GUI 100% OCaml which is built on
top of the OCaml Win32 API . This enable you to easily create and manipulate
GUI components ( as easy as Borland VCL but still incomplete ). Then I wrote
and XML toplevel so that you can write your interface in xml ( this took me
only two days, and the result is far more readable that any C equivalent
would have been ). This done, I created a tool called "Dragoon3" which was
designed to be a multi user resources sharing platform for the 3D game my
company was planning : Virtual file system, duplicate data stored in DB,
check in & out, and plugins enable.... all in Ocaml. Then I finally wrote
the 3D Engine for the game ( DirectX based ) and interfaced it with OCaml so
I could instanciate and manipulate 3D objects with it.

The results have been very good :  2x speedup in development process,
shorter code : easier to maintain, and great perfs.

Nicolas Cannasse

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[jeanmarc.eber]

Quoting Sven Luther <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>: 
 
> >  
> > I wrote the Osiris library, a native Win32 GUI 100% OCaml which is 
> built on 
> > top of the OCaml Win32 API . This enable you to easily create and 
> manipulate 
> > GUI components ( as easy as Borland VCL but still incomplete ). Then I 
> wrote 
> > and XML toplevel so that you can write your interface in xml ( this 
> took me 
> > only two days, and the result is far more readable that any C 
> equivalent 
> > would have been ). This done, I created a tool called "Dragoon3" which 
> was 
> > designed to be a multi user resources sharing platform for the 3D game 
> my 
> > company was planning : Virtual file system, duplicate data stored in 
> DB, 
> > check in & out, and plugins enable.... all in Ocaml. Then I finally 
> wrote 
> > the 3D Engine for the game ( DirectX based ) and interfaced it with 
> OCaml so 
> > I could instanciate and manipulate 3D objects with it. 
> >  
> > The results have been very good :  2x speedup in development process, 
> > shorter code : easier to maintain, and great perfs. 
>  
> But windows only :((( 
>  
> Friendly, 
>  
> Sven Luther 
 
What's the problem about that ? Why :(((( ? 
Isn't it fine that ocaml is used *natively* on the win32 platform also ? 
 
Jean-Marc Eber 
 
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Sven Luther]

On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 09:20:49PM +0100, jeanmarc.eber@lexifi.com wrote:
> Quoting Sven Luther <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>: 
>  
> > >  
> > > I wrote the Osiris library, a native Win32 GUI 100% OCaml which is 
> > built on 
> > > top of the OCaml Win32 API . This enable you to easily create and 
> > manipulate 
> > > GUI components ( as easy as Borland VCL but still incomplete ). Then I 
> > wrote 
> > > and XML toplevel so that you can write your interface in xml ( this 
> > took me 
> > > only two days, and the result is far more readable that any C 
> > equivalent 
> > > would have been ). This done, I created a tool called "Dragoon3" which 
> > was 
> > > designed to be a multi user resources sharing platform for the 3D game 
> > my 
> > > company was planning : Virtual file system, duplicate data stored in 
> > DB, 
> > > check in & out, and plugins enable.... all in Ocaml. Then I finally 
> > wrote 
> > > the 3D Engine for the game ( DirectX based ) and interfaced it with 
> > OCaml so 
> > > I could instanciate and manipulate 3D objects with it. 
> > >  
> > > The results have been very good :  2x speedup in development process, 
> > > shorter code : easier to maintain, and great perfs. 
> >  
> > But windows only :((( 
> >  
> > Friendly, 
> >  
> > Sven Luther 
>  
> What's the problem about that ? Why :(((( ? 
> Isn't it fine that ocaml is used *natively* on the win32 platform also ? 

Yes, but that would mean that the apps developped for it will only be
usable for on windows only, which let many people out in the cold. In
particular, i would love to play a ocaml based games, not that i have
time for it but still, but since i don't have windows, ...

Also, i remember when i was some time back at the AFIG conference, there
where the people making the outcast games explaining how they did their
software rendering and all, and i asked them about a linux port, since
they software was not using any hardware acceleration, in these pre-DRI
times it would have been a good candidate for a linux port. They
esquived my question, and look where they are now ? Maybe the publicity
coup they would have made with releasing a linux games would have saved
them.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[malc]

On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Sven Luther wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 09:20:49PM +0100, jeanmarc.eber@lexifi.com wrote:
> > Quoting Sven Luther <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>: 
> >  
> > What's the problem about that ? Why :(((( ? 
> > Isn't it fine that ocaml is used *natively* on the win32 platform also ? 
> 
> Yes, but that would mean that the apps developped for it will only be
> usable for on windows only, which let many people out in the cold. In
> particular, i would love to play a ocaml based games, not that i have
> time for it but still, but since i don't have windows, ...
> 
> Also, i remember when i was some time back at the AFIG conference, there
> where the people making the outcast games explaining how they did their
> software rendering and all, and i asked them about a linux port, since
> they software was not using any hardware acceleration, in these pre-DRI
> times it would have been a good candidate for a linux port. They
> esquived my question, and look where they are now ? Maybe the publicity
> coup they would have made with releasing a linux games would have saved
> them.

Hands off Outcast please. Besides i doubt that Appeal's failure has 
anything to do with Outcast being windows only. And btw Outcast was 
instrumental in one person's switch to OCaml.

P.S. http://algol.prosalg.no/~malc/motazaar/

-- 
mailto:malc@pulsesoft.com

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 01:43:48AM +0300, malc wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Sven Luther wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 09:20:49PM +0100, jeanmarc.eber@lexifi.com wrote:
> > > Quoting Sven Luther <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>: 
> > >  
> > > What's the problem about that ? Why :(((( ? 
> > > Isn't it fine that ocaml is used *natively* on the win32 platform also ? 
> > 
> > Yes, but that would mean that the apps developped for it will only be
> > usable for on windows only, which let many people out in the cold. In
> > particular, i would love to play a ocaml based games, not that i have
> > time for it but still, but since i don't have windows, ...
> > 
> > Also, i remember when i was some time back at the AFIG conference, there
> > where the people making the outcast games explaining how they did their
> > software rendering and all, and i asked them about a linux port, since
> > they software was not using any hardware acceleration, in these pre-DRI
> > times it would have been a good candidate for a linux port. They
> > esquived my question, and look where they are now ? Maybe the publicity
> > coup they would have made with releasing a linux games would have saved
> > them.
> 
> Hands off Outcast please. Besides i doubt that Appeal's failure has 
> anything to do with Outcast being windows only. And btw Outcast was 
> instrumental in one person's switch to OCaml.

Ok, no problem, it was just one thing that came to mind when thinking
about this, since i recently read of Appeal's demise and remembered this
discution. That said, i believe that their rendering engine could have
easily been ported, more easily that other hardware accelerated engines
of that time at least.

That said, jean marc asked if it wasn't fine to have ocaml used
*natively* on the win32 plateform, and i believe it would be nice, but
would create the risk of win32 only ocaml programs, which is IMHO not a
nice thing to contemplate.

> P.S. http://algol.prosalg.no/~malc/motazaar/

Mmm, i see it uses GTK+, it would run on linux too then ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[malc]

On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Sven Luther wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 01:43:48AM +0300, malc wrote:

> > Hands off Outcast please. Besides i doubt that Appeal's failure has 
> > anything to do with Outcast being windows only. And btw Outcast was 
> > instrumental in one person's switch to OCaml.
> 
> Ok, no problem, it was just one thing that came to mind when thinking
> about this, since i recently read of Appeal's demise and remembered this
> discution. That said, i believe that their rendering engine could have
> easily been ported, more easily that other hardware accelerated engines
> of that time at least.
> 
> That said, jean marc asked if it wasn't fine to have ocaml used
> *natively* on the win32 plateform, and i believe it would be nice, but
> would create the risk of win32 only ocaml programs, which is IMHO not a
> nice thing to contemplate.
> 
> > P.S. http://algol.prosalg.no/~malc/motazaar/
> 
> Mmm, i see it uses GTK+, it would run on linux too then ?

It was developed under Linux, Windows version was, quite painful,
afterthought. Btw. i advice everyone to stay as far away of GTK+ as 
possible(esp. under Windows)

-- 
mailto:malc@pulsesoft.com

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Eric Mangold]

malc wrote:

>Btw. i advice everyone to stay as far away of GTK+ as possible.
>  
>
Why?

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[malc]

On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Eric Mangold wrote:

> malc wrote:
> 
> >Btw. i advice everyone to stay as far away of GTK+ as possible.
> >  
> >
> Why?

My personal hatered aside, its slow(sluggish if you wish), has terrible 
keyboad/focus problems. And on Windows all the problems feel ten times
worse (Modal dialogs anyone? Underlining? Etc etc) Another point is that
under Windows you have to either live with multimegabyte executables or 
redistribute gtk dlls, cause virtually no one has them installed. 
Certainly not my idea of fun.

Perhaps some of the shortcomings are fixed with 2.x, but i doubt it,
after poking at the sorces a while back it felt horribly misdesigned, 
but i wont elaborate on this.

P.S. But it has all those themes and looks so lovely at times, well duh
id rather live without them.

-- 
mailto:malc@pulsesoft.com

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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 04:21:32AM +0300, malc wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Eric Mangold wrote:
> 
> > malc wrote:
> > 
> > >Btw. i advice everyone to stay as far away of GTK+ as possible.
> > >  
> > >
> > Why?
> 
> My personal hatered aside, its slow(sluggish if you wish), has terrible 
> keyboad/focus problems. And on Windows all the problems feel ten times
> worse (Modal dialogs anyone? Underlining? Etc etc) Another point is that
> under Windows you have to either live with multimegabyte executables or 
> redistribute gtk dlls, cause virtually no one has them installed. 
> Certainly not my idea of fun.

I think it is ok to redistribute the gtk dlls, but then i suppose you
use lablgtk, and it would be the responsaibility of the lablgtk dlls to
also include the gtk dlls.

All the more reason to have propper binary only windows packaging system
for ocaml.

> Perhaps some of the shortcomings are fixed with 2.x, but i doubt it,
> after poking at the sorces a while back it felt horribly misdesigned, 
> but i wont elaborate on this.

What about using ocamlsdl for interface ?

> P.S. But it has all those themes and looks so lovely at times, well duh
> id rather live without them.

:)))

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Olivier Andrieu]

 Sven Luther [Saturday 9 November 2002] :
 > > Perhaps some of the shortcomings are fixed with 2.x, but i doubt
 > > it, after poking at the sorces a while back it felt horribly
 > > misdesigned, but i wont elaborate on this.
 > 
 > What about using ocamlsdl for interface ?

That's not the same thing : SDL is not an interface toolkit, just a
low-level hardware access API. Basically, it has only 2 functions :
`blit' and `poll_events' (the S in SDL is for "simple", remember).

-- 
   Olivier
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Sven Luther]

On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 10:17:36AM +0100, Olivier Andrieu wrote:
>  Sven Luther [Saturday 9 November 2002] :
>  > > Perhaps some of the shortcomings are fixed with 2.x, but i doubt
>  > > it, after poking at the sorces a while back it felt horribly
>  > > misdesigned, but i wont elaborate on this.
>  > 
>  > What about using ocamlsdl for interface ?
> 
> That's not the same thing : SDL is not an interface toolkit, just a
> low-level hardware access API. Basically, it has only 2 functions :
> `blit' and `poll_events' (the S in SDL is for "simple", remember).

Mm, i am not really all that familiar with ocamlSDL, nor SDL, but i
guess you could build a ocaml based toolkit on top of it, could you not ?

That said, i don't know how efficient it would be, mmm, have to look at
how OcamlSDL handle surfaces.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Warp]

[...]
> > > But windows only :((( 
> > >  
> > > Friendly, 
> > >  
> > > Sven Luther 
> >  
> > What's the problem about that ? Why :(((( ? 
> > Isn't it fine that ocaml is used *natively* on the win32 platform also
> ? 
> 
> Yes, but that would mean that the apps developped for it will only be
> usable for on windows only, which let many people out in the cold. In
> particular, i would love to play a ocaml based games, not that i have
> time for it but still, but since i don't have windows, ...
> 
> Also, i remember when i was some time back at the AFIG conference,
> there
> where the people making the outcast games explaining how they did
> their
> software rendering and all, and i asked them about a linux port, since
> they software was not using any hardware acceleration, in these
> pre-DRI
> times it would have been a good candidate for a linux port. They
> esquived my question, and look where they are now ? Maybe the
> publicity
> coup they would have made with releasing a linux games would have
> saved
> them.

That's an OT subject... almost troll :)

Back to the thread, I would say that to port of such a game would only need the 
port of the C 3D functions DLL based on the OCaml interface which could be 
disclosed without the need to release the entire game source code ( often a 
problem for us industrials - no flames please ). And actually only people 
building the game care about the R&D tools, which can also be built by porting 
Osiris to *Nix systems ( eg by using GTK ).

OCaml so is really useful because you only need to take care of the low-level 
library port ( which can be open sourced if you release only the interfaces ) 
which is a pretty good compromise for both industrials and end users.

Nicolas Cannasse
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Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Windows please advise

[Olivier Andrieu]

 Sven Luther [Saturday 9 November 2002] :
 >
 > On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 10:17:36AM +0100, Olivier Andrieu wrote:
 > >  Sven Luther [Saturday 9 November 2002] :
 > >  > > Perhaps some of the shortcomings are fixed with 2.x, but i
 > >  > > doubt it, after poking at the sorces a while back it felt
 > >  > > horribly misdesigned, but i wont elaborate on this.
 > >  > 
 > >  > What about using ocamlsdl for interface ?
 > > 
 > > That's not the same thing : SDL is not an interface toolkit, just
 > > a low-level hardware access API. Basically, it has only 2
 > > functions : `blit' and `poll_events' (the S in SDL is for
 > > "simple", remember).
 > 
 > Mm, i am not really all that familiar with ocamlSDL, nor SDL, but i
 > guess you could build a ocaml based toolkit on top of it, could you
 > not ?

Sure, you could build something, just as you could use Graphics to do
this. It's really not designed for building toolkits. For instance,
SDL can only manage a single window.

-- 
    Olivier
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