Eiffel SDL multimedia library (ESDL) Version 0.0.1 httpn.ethz.chstudentbaytpublications.pdf

Eiffel SDL multimedia library (ESDL) DIPLOMA THESIS PROJECT PLAN Till G. Bay 28th May 2003 Project Period: Monday, 2003-05-26 - Friday, 2003-09-26 Student: Till G. Bay (tillbay@student.ethz.ch) Student-No: 98-803-000 Supervising Assistant: Karine Arnout Supervising Professor: Bertrand Meyer 1 1 Project description 1.1 Overview Support for building multimedia applications is mandatory for libraries accom- panying modern programming languages. Therefore many programming lan- guages provide not only standard libraries that allow a programmer to perform simple tasks like I/O, memory access or string handling, but they also ship with libraries that provide support for video, audio, CD-ROM, multi threading, networking, access to OpenGL[15] and access to input devices such as mice, keyboards and joysticks. Naturally a multimedia library is bigger than one of the mentioned standard libraries, since it tries to harbor all APIs for the vari- ous applications in one comprehensive package (more on this in section 3.1 on page 4). The history of OpenGL[15] shows that the success and the widespread ac- ceptance of a multimedia library depend on the portability of the applications created using it. Eiffel[1, 13] is lacking a platform independent multimedia li- brary. This diploma thesis aims to fill this gap by building an object oriented multimedia library in Eiffel based on SDL[16] which itself constitutes a platform independent multimedia library written in C[9]. Summary of the multimedia library options available for Eiffel today and corresponding drawbacks: ? EiffelFURY[6]: a 2D and multimedia library – only for Windows ? EiffelOpenGL[5]: an Eiffel wrapper for OpenGL, GLU[7] and GLUT[8] – not multimedia, neither sound nor video support ? jegl[10]: a set of wrapper classes around SDL written in SmartEiffel[17] – is incomplete and not maintained anymore ? Eiffel SDL[19]: multimedia library for Eiffel – under development This listing shows that there have been and that there are