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<blockquote data-quote="Klintus Fang" data-source="post: 418933" data-attributes="member: 3580">All you have to distribute is the compiled dll/so file and an appropriate header file that defines the api.&nbsp; You don't have to distribute the source code.&nbsp;&nbsp; Your town generator, for example, could theoretically, easily be compiled into a DLL and then called by another program.&nbsp; The fact that it doesn't work that way is the main reason I don't use it, BTW.&nbsp; Nothing the program does actually depends on the gui.&nbsp; There's no reason it couldn't be written to accept inputs from another program directly via some api and then have it return a pointer to a data structure that contains all the information about the town.&nbsp; THAT is what I consider to be what determines the degree of &quot;interoperability&quot;.Distributing libraries is quite easy to do across multiple platforms.&nbsp; Good C code will transport pretty smoothly back and forth between Windows and Linux (don't have much experience with Mac) so long as it doesn't have any GUI interfaces in it but instead makes use only of standard system calls that are available on all OS's.&nbsp;&nbsp; Sure GUI's are going to be problematic unless you write your code in Java.&nbsp; But that is true independent of whether or not you use TCP/IP as the communication interface.&nbsp; I don't see how TCP/IP is going to solve the cross platform problem at all.&nbsp; The code itself still has to be able to run on multiple platforms, in which case it has to be compiled separately on all supported platforms, in which case there's no reason it can't be designed from the beginning to be a dll instead rather than an independent application.true.&nbsp; but that's also true if all the independent pieces are compiled as shared libraries as well.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Klintus Fang, post: 418933, member: 3580"] All you have to distribute is the compiled dll/so file and an appropriate header file that defines the api. You don't have to distribute the source code. Your town generator, for example, could theoretically, easily be compiled into a DLL and then called by another program. The fact that it doesn't work that way is the main reason I don't use it, BTW. Nothing the program does actually depends on the gui. There's no reason it couldn't be written to accept inputs from another program directly via some api and then have it return a pointer to a data structure that contains all the information about the town. THAT is what I consider to be what determines the degree of "interoperability". Distributing libraries is quite easy to do across multiple platforms. Good C code will transport pretty smoothly back and forth between Windows and Linux (don't have much experience with Mac) so long as it doesn't have any GUI interfaces in it but instead makes use only of standard system calls that are available on all OS's. Sure GUI's are going to be problematic unless you write your code in Java. But [i]that[/i] is true independent of whether or not you use TCP/IP as the communication interface. I don't see how TCP/IP is going to solve the cross platform problem at all. The code itself still has to be able to run on multiple platforms, in which case it has to be compiled separately on all supported platforms, in which case there's no reason it can't be designed from the beginning to be a dll instead rather than an independent application. true. but that's also true if all the independent pieces are compiled as shared libraries as well. [/QUOTE]

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