Porting of Berkeley mpeg_play to 32 bit OS/2
--------------------------------------------

The ported source, ported executable and this file will be / have been
sent to toe.cs.berkeley.edu. I also intend to upload this elsewhere.

The target compiler was IBM C-Set++ 2.0. Turning optimisation on does not
appear to break the decoder. Still, it doesn't seem to get it to go much
faster either!

To make everything work on FAT filesystems, I have changed all names to the
8.3 convention. Accordingly mpeg_play is now MPEGPLAY.EXE.

I always defined OS2, so that wherever I had to add a hack, I could use
#ifdef OS2. Wherever I made a change, I put a comment with @@@ in it.
The files os2port.h and os2port.c encompass any additional source required.

I built all the code multithreaded (/Gm+). This was obviously not a requirement
but is the way I build all my code. Single threaded librarys never seem to
make a significant difference in performance.

I wrote a makefile.os2 which makes it.

I had to change the fopen(, "r") to use "rb" instead. .MPG files are binary.
Portability could have been aided here by using "rb" etc. (on all systems
I know the b is ignored).

random() got mapped to rand() on OS/2.

I #ifdef-ed various input event related stuff from XWindows.

The signal handler definition must be fully prototyped for OS/2, so I did it.

This port supports 320x200 at 8bpp VGA mode display, hence the -dither color
option got removed.

The easiest way for me to port the code, given its highly intricate dependency
on XWindows for me to write a module XSTUB, which fakes up enough XWindows
for MPEG Play to work.

I defined PIXEL(p) to be p or pixel[p] depending upon whether building for OS/2
or not. This is because in OS/2 I know in many cases pixel[i]==i, so I can
avoid indexing the pixel table. This should make things go faster, but doesn't!
Perhaps my machine has a decent cache size?


Suggested improvements
----------------------

The supplied code is riddled with XWindows calls, and this is the main problem.
Fundementally, this code creates a window of a given size, gets a palette for
it, and writes bits to the window. A single source file could encapsule the
XWindows dependencies and provide the entrypoints given above. This would have
made my porting job much much easier.

Use 8.3 naming convention for files. Allows easier port to OS/2 and DOS.

Use ANSI fully prototyped definitions everywhere. How many machines can you
name having only K&R C compilers and not ANSI?

Use #defines OPEN_READ_ASCII, OPEN_READ_BINARY as "r" "rb" on OS/2 and DOS,
or "r" "r" on UNIX. Use these wherever fopen() is used.


Legal-junk
----------

This port was done in my own time with my own equiptment.
It is nothing to do with IBM (despite my address quoted below being in IBM),
or any other company.

The basic code I started from may be "freely distributed", so are my
porting changes, and therefore so is the final result.


{{{ Andy Key

Internet: ak@vnet.ibm.com			# Contract valid until Sept 94
IBM-VNET: AKEY @ HVTVM5				# so addresses valid until then