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Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.3 Wiki

This wiki is your portal to documentation and other resources for SDL 1.3.

Contents

  1. Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.3 Wiki
    1. Using the SDL documentation Wiki
    2. Introduction to SDL
      1. What is SDL?
      2. What can SDL do?
      3. What platforms does SDL run on?
      4. Special features in SDL 1.3
    3. How to use this site

Using the SDL documentation Wiki

Use the links under the Navigation Links heading on the left-hand menu to access:

Registered users can use the Edit links under the Page Actions heading on the left-hand menu to add or update content in the wiki. For help using the editing functions see the MoinMoin Wiki Help pages, also available at any time from the Wiki Help link under the Navigation Links heading.

Introduction to SDL

What is SDL?

The Simple DirectMedia Layer library (SDL) is a general API that provides low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D framebuffer across multiple platforms.

The current version (1.3) supports Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. The code contains support for AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, and SymbianOS, but these are not officially supported.

SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, C#, Eiffel, Erlang, Euphoria, Guile, Haskell, Java, Lisp, Lua, ML, Objective C, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Pike, Pliant, Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk.

This library is distributed under GNU LGPL version 2, which can be found in the file "COPYING". This license allows you to use SDL freely in commercial programs as long as you link with the dynamic library.

The best way to learn how to use SDL is to check out the header files in the "include" subdirectory and the programs in the "test" subdirectory. The header files and test programs are well commented and always up to date. More documentation is available in HTML format in "docs/index.html", and a documentation wiki is available online at: http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi

The test programs in the "test" subdirectory are in the public domain.

Frequently asked questions are answered online: http://www.libsdl.org/faq.php

If you need help with the library, or just want to discuss SDL related issues, you can join the developers mailing list: http://www.libsdl.org/mailing-list.php

What can SDL do?

Video

  • Set a video mode at any depth (8-bpp or greater) with optional conversion, if the video mode is not supported by the hardware.
  • Write directly to a linear graphics framebuffer.
  • Create surfaces with colorkey or alpha blending attributes.
  • Surface blits are automatically converted to the target format using optimized blitters and are hardware accelerated, when possible. MMX optimized blits are available for the x86.
  • Hardware accelerated blit and fill operations are used if supported by the hardware.

Events

  • Events provided for:
    • Application visibility changes
    • Keyboard input
    • Mouse input
    • User-requested quit

  • Each event can be enabled or disabled with SDL_EventState().

  • Events are passed through a user-specified filter function before being posted to the internal event queue.
  • Thread-safe event queue.

Audio

  • Set audio playback of 8-bit and 16-bit audio, mono or stereo, with optional conversion if the format is not supported by the hardware.
  • Audio runs independently in a separate thread, filled via a user callback mechanism.
  • Designed for custom software audio mixers, but the example archive contains a complete audio/music output library.

Threads

  • Simple thread creation API
  • Simple binary semaphores for synchronization

Timers

  • Get the number of milliseconds elapsed
  • Wait a specified number of milliseconds
  • Set a single periodic timer with 10ms resolution

Endian Independence

  • Detect the endianness of the current system
  • Routines for fast swapping of data values
  • Read and write data of a specified endianness

What platforms does SDL run on?

Linux

  • Uses X11 for video display, taking advantage of XFree86 DGA extensions and new MTRR acceleration for fullscreen display.
  • Uses the OSS API for sound.
  • Threads are implemented using either the clone() system call and SysV IPC, or glibc-2.1 pthreads.

Windows

  • Two versions, one safe for all systems based on Win32 APIs, and one with higher performance, based on DirectX APIs.

  • Safe version uses GDI for video display. High performance version uses DirectDraw for video display, taking advantage of hardware acceleration if available.

  • Safe version uses waveOut APIs for sound. High performace version uses DirectSound for audio playback.

Mac OS

  • more info?

Special features in SDL 1.3

  • Full 3D hardware acceleration
  • Support for OpenGL 3.0
  • Support for multiple windows
  • Support for multiple displays
  • Support for multiple mice, tablets, etc.
  • Force Feedback available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

Interesting starting points:

How to use this site

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