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Message: <blockquote data-quote="towngen" data-source="post: 422154" data-attributes="member: 1528">Ok, now I think I am understanding you.  An no, I don't think you're being stubborn.  You're simply speaking until someone actually understands you.  That's one of the big difficulties with message boards.  So much is lost in a conversation when you're not sitting in front of them chatting.  Personally, I think it's cool that you care enough about this to continue to attempt to be heard.  So in that sense I say, "Right On Man!  Say it again!"   Anyway, you're participating in the dialog and I appreciate it.All that being said I still disagree with the library thing.  If there were such a thing as a cross platform object format than any language could compile into I think I would support your idea.But let's take my town generator for example.  I just finished re-writing the entire underlying code from my original hack and slash spagetti code into nice well organized class objects.  I would guess that so far about 75% of all the computations are being done inside those class objects.  Once I get into the more automated part of the town construction process, more like 90% of it is going to be in those class objects.  I have about 3 man-months of work in the code so far.  Exactly how can I distribute a compiled cross-platform library from my code without starting over and writing it in C++ and distributing my source code?  And even if I did that, what good would a pile of C++ code be to someone who is going to write a program in Java and happens to not know squat about C++?  You can't compile it to a relocatable object file with a header file listing all the exported functions because that is platform specific.  Good luck trying to get an OBJ written for a PowerPC (Mac) to run on a Pentium, or visversa.  Finally, if it is a commercial application you wish to link to, are you really wanting to compile it into your application and redistribute it yourself?  I can't imagine many people going for that.  However if you mean a library like a DLL, then it's already fully compiled and thus is no longer platform indepentant.  Perhaps I'm just a blockhead this evening and I am still misunderstanding, but I just don't see how it's possible.  If you see how it's possible, please enumerate clearly HOW I can do what you're suggesting with my town generator written in VB 6.0 because I just don't understand.  I'm not trying to be difficult, I just don't get it.Fast Learner, the web based clearing house for port addresses is kinda cool.  It might be simpler to implement as just a local host file formatted somewhat like an ASCII ini file.  Everytime a new program comes out they could just include a text file to cut & paste onto the end of the API's host file.  Then whenever you ran a program that supported the API, it would read the host file and know everything else out there and what they support.  That way no central authority has control over the official list of who's listed.  The lines to include would simply be distributed with the program.  A small simple platform specific (or non-specific if you can find someone willing to write it in Java) program could even automate the process of updating the host.ini file with the new lines.  That would help with version control too.  Of course, if we're going to make a program that handles this file, then the file probably ought to be XML instead of an ini style file.  But if we gotta have people regularly getting into the file, it better be a real simple format like INI.Has anyone looked into the DLL question I asked a couple days ago?  Does anyone know how the architecture of Linux, Mac, and WinNT handles calling dll's from separate applications?  In Win98 I believe it's cool, as long as you call the same copy of the dll on the harddrive, it's the same instance of the dll.  In the others, do they invoke separate instances of the DLL, or are they all sharing the same instance?  If they maintain separate application spaces for all user-level dll's, how difficult is it to elevate the DLL to run at the system-level so that only a single instance is visible to all application spaces?  ... Anyone ... ?</blockquote>

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