[GEM Development] [GEM-DEV] GEM 32

[Shane Gough]

Hi Shane (that sounds weird),

The reason I decided to make two separate projects was because the API
should provide an application interface only (which should be - in a perfect
world - compatible with all implementations of GEM). The idea is that you
could download the gemapi project and use it to develop applications for DR
GEM, OpenGEM, Atari GEM, GEMix, whatever. The restriction being that the API
only covered VDI and AES calls - OS specific stuff would be up to the
developer. I also considered adding a third set of calls to the API for
common operations that are not supported by the existing GEM interface -
like common access to configuration files (like the Windows
xxxProfileString() functions) - this would require a POSIX based OS (or
compatibility library) though.

The 'gemix' project was purely an implementation of VDI, AES and the Desktop
for Linux. It would contribute code to the API project (as a binding that
could be used) but the API project would not depend on it.

I think the two projects are aiming for different goals - the first (gemapi)
is aiming for a common API for all GEM implementations. The second is an
implementation of the GEM API for a new platform.

I've looked at the Seasip site before (I originally came across it because I
was making a port of Manic Miner - my favourite game on my first computer,
the ZX Spectrum - and he had some details of map formats etc). Once again it
seems Intel/DOS specific. Other sites I've come across seem Atari/TOS
specific. It would be nice to have a generic GEM interface that could be
used by all source (and would ease porting between the various
implementations).

Regards,
ShaneG

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Shane Martin Coughlan <shane at shaneland.co.uk
> wrote:

> Hi Shane
>
> > Anyway - as I have stated previously I have created the 'gemapi' and
> > 'gemix' projects on SourceForge. I'm happy to hand over control of the
> > 'gemapi' project to those with more of a history (and more experience)
> > with GEM. I intend to continue with the 'gemix' project as a 'GEM
> > like' (at the very least) implementation of the GEM API for the Linux
> > kernel (initially, ideally it should work on any POSIX compliant
> > system that someone can provide a VDI implementation for). SourceForge
> > does provide for webspace as well so maybe the 'gemapi' project would
> > be a reasonable place for a documentation Wiki and other developer
> > style information?
>
> Could the two projects be combined into one codebase that is not
> platform dependent, allows backward compatibility (when running on x86)
> and potentially also allows Atari platform tools to work?
>
> I think a starting point for you is probably to have a chat with John.
> He has done a lot of the work to modernize GEM.  His site is here:
> http://www.seasip.info/Gem/index.html
>
> Regards
>
> Shane
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gem-dev mailing list
> gem-dev at simpits.org
> http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.simpits.org/pipermail/gem-dev/attachments/20091109/b926a866/attachment.html