d3dx implementation senseless?

[Stefan Dösinger]

Am Freitag, 4. Januar 2008 17:00:46 schrieb tony.wasserka at freenet.de:
> Oh well, I didn't think about that, sorry.
> Then it of course is a good thing if we implement our own d3dx.
The directx license as far as I understand it, allows installing and using the 
dx runtime, which d3dx* is a part of, on Wine, even if the user does not have 
a Windows license. However, it does not allow shipping the DLLs with any 
application that it intended to run on non-windows platforms. So we need the 
d3dx DLLs if anyone wants to port an app that uses them using Wine.

Appart of that, there's a usability argument. Since Windows XP SP2 and Windows 
Vista ship many of those DLLs, apps forget to ship them. Even if apps ship 
the dx runtime, there are some tricks needed to install it. Just having the 
DLLs available helps the usability of Wine.

> Would we implement e.g. a BMP file loader ourselves or would we use a 3rd
> party library for that? Are there any patents regarding the DX specific file 
> formats (.x/.dds)  
just fyi, at least the .dds file format is well documented. I don't know 
about .x, but I think it is just plain text as well. Applications like 
kuickshow(the kde image viewer) have an implementation for it, and I think 
Gimp supports it as well. DXTn makes problems, especially writing DXTn 
images, but we can maybe use the Nvidia texture tools(MIT license) to solve 
both technical and legal problems.