Simple DirectMedia Library [1]

The Simple DirectMedia Library is a cross-platform C library for dealing with graphics, sound, joystick and keyboard/mouse input. It provides a nice, if rather simple, API for setting video modes and drawing graphics, and has some OpenGL support. This is great stuff for writing [games].

Currently, Neil Madden is working on a simple binding of SDL for Tcl. This will be pretty much a direct mapping of the SDL API to Tcl (but following Tcl's conventions). This will be mostly useful for scripting SDL components written in C, but you could write stuff in Tcl if you can live with the performance hit, or for prototyping.

Kristoffer Lawson is working on a higher level binding for Tcl, called Oil, which is directed at games and other multimedia presentations, that are scripted in Tcl.

tclsdl is another project that links the SDL and Tcl event loops together to let Tcl control an SDL surface. [http://code.google.com/p/tclsdl/]

There is a certain amount of overlap in these projects and hopefully effort can be made to merge parts.

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Other media libraries it would be nice to have in Tcl:

OpenAL - a 3D sound library, useful for effects. I don't think Snack has spatial sound.

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Other Bindings edit

• What about [Kent Mein]'s TclDemo at http://www.libsdl.org/projects/tcl-demo/ ?
• Jim has some SDL and SDL_Glx binding in the current distribution. Check Jim Extensions for example and screenshot.
• Tcl3D wraps the Audio and CD related portions of the SDL library. It also has some demonstration programs [2] using SDL.
• The brick engine uses SDL as well and exposes part of the SDL API to Tcl.
• Tim Baker also had done a Tk backend in SDL, look here: http://members.shaw.ca/tnbaker/SDLTk/

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LMBOX [3] is an application framework for multimedia desktops or computer-based set top boxes which uses SDL via Eboxy [4].

(eboxy is a small Linux application for building user interfaces for set-top boxes, suitable for use on a TV. It reads an XML file describing a simple GUI consisting of pages and widgets, and displays it on the screen.)

LMBOX features an embedded Tcl interpreter which allows binding of all events to Tcl scripts.

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