[vorbis-dev] win32sdk-1.0.1

[Rob D]

Hello, Rob here, long time lurker, first time poster :)

First off. This is an awesome project and I appreciate all the work you all
have done to make this so easy to implement an ogg encoder/decoder. Finally
I can write an encoder and not worry about getting sued!

I have been programming for nearly 20 years now, and am very surprised to
see the level of support you give to the developers on all platforms. Having
worked with nearly a dozen commercial and freeware libraries in the past,
you usually get either a dll for your specific platform (Win, WinNT, or
Win32); a static library for your compiler (VC5,Borland,CodeWarrior,etc), or
machine generic source code. Ive never seen support for all 3, which you
have provided.

Also, I have never seen an SDK include compiler specific project files. In
the case of getting source code or libraries (static or DLL), I was always
on my own to figure out which files to include for my particular compiler.

I prefer to link my projects statically. I have not done exhaustive research
as to which ended up with larger total filesize. I just think the whole
windows DLL thing was a wonderful idea when memory costed $300 per MB, but
now it is just a way to trash your OS by having dozens of programs depend on
a chunk of code that will likely get overwritten when you install another
program.

Dohh, a litte sidetracked there.

My point is that if someone is too lazy to create their own project to
compile a program that they are FREE to use, how likely is it that they will
contribute to making the code better?

Even though the SDK I downloaded several months ago included compiled .libs,
(which I couldnt figure out which combination to use anyway for
multi-threaded static linking), I prefer to compile my own .libs anyway. At
least that way I know I have a full path from the source to executable code.

My other point is that when you ship the DLLs, it shouldnt matter what
compiler they have. They just write the program to connect to the DLL. For
lazy programmers, you can make .lib files that create the code for the
program to load the DLLs into memory, but that would require several
different versions depending on compiler, and maybe that is what you are
talking about, and Ill shut up now.

When I compile my own DLLs (when absolutely necessary to use them), I make a
.lib file to load the DLL, but if Im going to use a prepackaged DLL, it is
just as easy to use LoadLibrary calls.

I have a few executables I have created over the last few months, but I dont
work on ogg stuff very often, so it is taking me a bit of time to learn the
inner workings. Eventually I would like to contribute to the ogg/vorbis
project. I am very familiar with complicated algorithms and complex
calculations. 20 years ago I wrote a chess game in 6502 assembly language
that was fairly hard to beat. Nowadays I make emulators to train satellite
operators.

Did I mention how much you spoil the programmers by providing 1000 different
ways to build source code? I personally wouldnt worry about babysitting
programmers on 1000 different combinations of compilers and operating
systems.

Rob D

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-vorbis-dev at xiph.org [mailto:owner-vorbis-dev at xiph.org]On
Behalf Of Jack Moffitt
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 4:00 PM
To: vorbis-dev at xiph.org
Subject: Re: [vorbis-dev] win32sdk-1.0.1

<p>> Quick comparison (VC6):
>                      Dynamic Link              Static link
> ogg.dll              24kb                            56kb
> vorbis.dll          148kb                          212kb
> vorbisenc.dll     860kb                          900kb
> vorbisfile.dll      36kb                            84kb

We must have had the project files more screwed up than they are now,
because the numbers were much more significant back then.  Or maybe I
have the pre-vorbisenc split numbers in my head.  I don't remember
anymore.

Shipping them statically certain would be an option with the numbers you
posted.  Now, would doing that allow the same dlls to work with any
compiler (even say, Borland's)?

jack.
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