DreamShell v4.0.0 Release

[VeraBecker]

(13.05.2024 06:09)SWAT писал(а):  Yeah thanks, your PR merged!

Yes, I saw that MegaVolt reviewed it quickly, thanks.

Swat, are there better libraries than SDL to handle display on Dreamcast? It is very slow when loading images, I read that it is because it does it through software instead of hardware.

[SWAT]

(16.05.2024 06:49)VeraBecker писал(а):  

(13.05.2024 06:09)SWAT писал(а):  Yeah thanks, your PR merged!

Yes, I saw that MegaVolt reviewed it quickly, thanks.

Swat, are there better libraries than SDL to handle display on Dreamcast? It is very slow when loading images, I read that it is because it does it through software instead of hardware.

The rendering type does not affect image loading speed. Quite the contrary, for hardware rendering of images you also need to load them into video memory, which will only slow down the loading. So loading speed is not equal to rendering speed. These are different things.
SDL was chosen a long time ago and because of its simplicity and convenience. Yes, I would like the rendering to be faster in some places, but this only appears when scrolling the list of files and the console text, nothing more. Otherwise it works quite well. For special cases such as video frames display, there is a mechanism for hardware rendering on top of a software screen. This one is used for camera previews.
Thus, the DS has a hybrid rendering mechanism.

[VeraBecker]

(16.05.2024 19:09)SWAT писал(а):  The rendering type does not affect image loading speed. Quite the contrary, for hardware rendering of images you also need to load them into video memory, which will only slow down the loading. So loading speed is not equal to rendering speed. These are different things.
SDL was chosen a long time ago and because of its simplicity and convenience. Yes, I would like the rendering to be faster in some places, but this only appears when scrolling the list of files and the console text, nothing more. Otherwise it works quite well. For special cases such as video frames display, there is a mechanism for hardware rendering on top of a software screen. This one is used for camera previews.
Thus, the DS has a hybrid rendering mechanism.

I see, do you think it's possible to upgrade SDL to a newer version? Or is it too difficult?

[SWAT]

(17.05.2024 07:01)VeraBecker писал(а):  

(16.05.2024 19:09)SWAT писал(а):  The rendering type does not affect image loading speed. Quite the contrary, for hardware rendering of images you also need to load them into video memory, which will only slow down the loading. So loading speed is not equal to rendering speed. These are different things.
SDL was chosen a long time ago and because of its simplicity and convenience. Yes, I would like the rendering to be faster in some places, but this only appears when scrolling the list of files and the console text, nothing more. Otherwise it works quite well. For special cases such as video frames display, there is a mechanism for hardware rendering on top of a software screen. This one is used for camera previews.
Thus, the DS has a hybrid rendering mechanism.

I see, do you think it's possible to upgrade SDL to a newer version? Or is it too difficult?

It couldn't work any better and this is not easy to do. I don't see the point in this.
What specifically don't suit you in current version of SDL?
The DS is designed in such a way that you can write anything at any time with hardware acceleration with PVR or Parallax API, on top of the built-in UI on SDL. But of course DS doesn't have hardware GUI API, so you need write your own buttons and so on.
Rewrite DS GUI API for hardware rendered it's like a developing new DreamShell 5.0 and rewrite all apps.

[VeraBecker]

(17.05.2024 07:38)SWAT писал(а):  It couldn't work any better and this is not easy to do. I don't see the point in this.
What specifically don't suit you in current version of SDL?
The DS is designed in such a way that you can write anything at any time with hardware acceleration with PVR or Parallax API, on top of the built-in UI on SDL. But of course DS doesn't have hardware GUI API, so you need write your own buttons and so on.
Rewrite DS GUI API for hardware rendered it's like a developing new DreamShell 5.0 and rewrite all apps.

I am using the object to create threads with SDL to load images faster, it works, the problem is that when I try to kill the thread it gets stuck, it is better to change to Pthread.h and with that library it works, I think it may contain errors.

Question, Does DS have libraries for displaying HTML?

[SWAT]

(17.05.2024 08:00)VeraBecker писал(а):  

(17.05.2024 07:38)SWAT писал(а):  It couldn't work any better and this is not easy to do. I don't see the point in this.
What specifically don't suit you in current version of SDL?
The DS is designed in such a way that you can write anything at any time with hardware acceleration with PVR or Parallax API, on top of the built-in UI on SDL. But of course DS doesn't have hardware GUI API, so you need write your own buttons and so on.
Rewrite DS GUI API for hardware rendered it's like a developing new DreamShell 5.0 and rewrite all apps.

I am using the object to create threads with SDL to load images faster, it works, the problem is that when I try to kill the thread it gets stuck, it is better to change to Pthread.h and with that library it works, I think it may contain errors.

You can use pthreads or KOS kernel threads API.
But I think your issue not from SDL in general. What you mean "kill thread" and what in this thread executed?
Threads can't speed up something on single core CPU , you get it as pseudo async nothing more.

(17.05.2024 08:00)VeraBecker писал(а):  Question, Does DS have libraries for displaying HTML?

Of course no It's too complicated to do. And modern sites are very gluttonous, Dreamcast can no longer do anything about it.
HTML parsing it is not a problem, the library that is used for XML in applications can handle this I think, and I made DS XML similar to HTML. But this is very, very far from modern HTML.

[VeraBecker]

(17.05.2024 11:17)SWAT писал(а):  You can use pthreads or KOS kernel threads API.
But I think your issue not from SDL in general. What you mean "kill thread" and what in this thread executed?

In other words, finish them without them running out, I was already able to do it

When I click to advance the page, I load the images asynchronously, so I can click without that page finishing loading on the main desktop.

I already did it but... I didn't like it.

When I was testing I found something, the memory when entering the DS is low, but when you open and close the Settings app for some reason it frees up a lot of memory, do you know why?

Use the mstats command to check memory.