[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12023) bugg found while playing freeciv

["Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa" <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12023 >

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Jason Short wrote:

>
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12023 >
>
> What platform are you on?  Crashes involving GTK are common (I'm told)
> on windows 95/98/me because those operating systems aren't memory-safe
> (or something like that).

Crashes involving GTK+ in Windows 95/98/ME are common because GTK+ for
Windows uses the GDI, and those OSes have a 16-bit GDI with little memory
to store a lot of hardware bitmaps (GdkPixmaps). Windows NT kernel based
OSes have a proper 32-bit GDI.

Yes, Windows 95/98/ME have many 16-bit components inside, harking back to
Windows 3.1, despite having also 32-bit components. In fact, you can even
use Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS drivers and crap like that on them. This is one
reason why they are so unstable. I seriously advise anyone using these
ancient chimeras to upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP ASAP, as I would advise
any MacOS Classic (which is Windows 3.1 on steroids chimera class) users
to upgrade to MacOS X.

The "fix" for this would be either to port GTK+ proper to use DirectDraw
instead of GDI (DirectDraw is at least 32-bit on *all* Windows platforms)
or to be parsimonious with GdkPixmap usage, using GdkPixbufs instead.
Which will be slower.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa