i don't see why it's something that couldn't be returned to, just because it was in 1.0? i'm not dis

i don't see why it's something that couldn't be returned to, just because it was in 1.0?
i'm not dismissing this

Ptr<T>

Ptr<T>

Ptr<T>

Ptr<T> idea of course, i am just trying to suggest stuff from a user's perspective. i love C#'s

unsafe

unsafe

, but I don't think it should be the norm for the end user, and I don't think that a custom type is the right way to do things - simply because to an end user, it is a type they may have never seen before, and may be confusing to use, to the point where one may have to read documentation to find out how to use it
now having documentation is fine, but personally if I were coming from say C++ opengl, I should not have to read documentation to be able to use it in C#, I should just be able to give it an array of data like normal and it just works
the intellisense says it is an array, I can see that it is an array, I give it array data, and it just works, no questions or errors or warnings asked by the compiler
sure there's faster options available, but it just works
for me, that is the advantage of C#
stuff just works, the intellisense makes it obvious what it does, no need to mess around reading documentation, you just give stuff data and off it goes.. then it doesn't work because you gave it the wrong offset but we don't talk about that

Kai•8/4/23, 9:02 PM

yeah this is great that we talk about this tbh

Kai•8/4/23, 9:02 PM

so the concern that we have had a few times when talking about this is that for functions like the one I gave above, it's really unclear to us which overloads to expose

AAqua i don't see why it's something that couldn't be returned to, just because it was...

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:02 PM

oh yeah sure, but all i'm saying there's a reason we moved away from the rigid 1.0 structure primarily because we got complaints about the overloads kinda being naff to use

Kai•8/4/23, 9:02 PM

and exposing all of them is problematic because then you get no intellisense and maybe your IDE just dies

Kai•8/4/23, 9:03 PM

which... yeah that's super bad

KKai yeah this is great that we talk about this tbh

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:03 PM

for sure, this is also why we refused to include overloads in the original 3.0 proposals haha

Kai•8/4/23, 9:04 PM

f(int***, void**, uint**, res*, float**)f(int***, void**, uint**, res*, float**)
here there is a very good argument that we should support passing
T[]T[] in place of T*T* everywhere, I think everyone agrees?
f(int**[], void*[], uint*[], res[], float*[])f(int**[], void*[], uint*[], res[], float*[]) should be a valid way to pass the args

Maxine•8/4/23, 9:04 PM

implicit casts to ptr might genuinely be a good alternative to having every permutation of argument as an overload

Maxine•8/4/23, 9:04 PM

but also doesn't work for every possible case

Kai•8/4/23, 9:04 PM

but then what about
f(int*[][], void[][], uint[][], res[], float[][])f(int*[][], void[][], uint[][], res[], float[][]) (now next to void[][] not being valid, so it should stay void*[]void*[])
these seem fine?

AAqua i don't see why it's something that couldn't be returned to, just because it was...

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:04 PM

i feel like this is also an IDE problem

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:04 PM

intellisense should pick up on implicit casts and give you nice completions

PPerksey oh yeah sure, but all i'm saying there's a reason we moved away from the rigid 1...

AquaOP•8/4/23, 9:05 PM

I'm not familliar with 1.0 so I can only say it from my own thoughts
one way to do it could be to simply stick to the spec, and don't provide any helpers etc
raw pointer overloads just have the exact same signature as the C API
and the safe overloads are similar, just any time there is a lengthlength and a pointer, remove that and convert it to an array
or something along those lines
in this way, you only need 2 or 3 overloads (if you include spans)

Kai•8/4/23, 9:05 PM

now we want to pass different versions of this to different args, so you take those 3 permutations I've shown and get 15 overloads (5 * 3 versions = 15) (minus the one void*[] that's not valid = 12 overloads)

AAqua I'm not familliar with 1.0 so I can only say it from my own thoughts one way to ...

Kai•8/4/23, 9:06 PM

This is true, but very much not ergonomic. C APIs will most likely not have a length or have a shared length for several of the arguments. It's hard to figure out what's what and even harder to really put this in an API

AAqua i don't see why it's something that couldn't be returned to, just because it was...

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:06 PM

while i agree with the "its less visually obvious to newcomers", once you learn the way its structured its a lot better ergonomically, its just teaching people that way, we'd need excellent documentation for this to really be viable

Kai•8/4/23, 9:06 PM

and it also doesn't really offer a good solution for passing int*[][]int*[][] or int*[,]int*[,]

AAqua I'm not familliar with 1.0 so I can only say it from my own thoughts one way to ...

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:07 PM

tbh i'm content with having a wrapped overload and an unwrapped overload i.e. if you used only the unwrapped functions, Silk.NET is literally just TerraFX but with pretty names.

AquaOP•8/4/23, 9:07 PM

if it's anything, these are the overloads I provide for creating a buffer in pie
https://github.com/piegfx/Pie/blob/main/src/Pie/GraphicsDevice.cs#L83-L122
they are not perfect and could do with a little refining, but they encompass pretty much everything one may want to do with them
the unsafe overload is there for those who want it, and there are safe options as well

PPerksey tbh i'm content with having a wrapped overload and an unwrapped overload i.e. if...

Maxine•8/4/23, 9:07 PM

yeah fuck it why not

PPerksey tbh i'm content with having a wrapped overload and an unwrapped overload i.e. if...

Kai•8/4/23, 9:07 PM

this I would prefer personally

KKai now we want to pass different versions of this to different args, so you take th...

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:07 PM

yeah if your methods have a lot of thing* and you do array overloading you start getting to 3**11 overload territory

PPerksey tbh i'm content with having a wrapped overload and an unwrapped overload i.e. if...

AquaOP•8/4/23, 9:07 PM

yeah, that could work quite well

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:07 PM

most of our users don't want that though, so we will encounter the education problem still.

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:08 PM

but again, my intention is to have a "Silk DSL 101" page that just tells you everything you need to know in using these wrappers

Maxine•8/4/23, 9:08 PM

silk documentation already isn't any good, it can't get worse

Kai•8/4/23, 9:08 PM

It's the same problem Span introduces though. These are advanced APIs, you spent hours digging through docs. Read the 2 lines the intellisense will give you once you hover over the Ptr type

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:08 PM

again we literally can't ship 3.0 until we have docs

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:08 PM

the Working Group has decided that

AquaOP•8/4/23, 9:08 PM

if you need docs written you know who to ask heh

Maxine•8/4/23, 9:08 PM

what a daunting name

Maxine•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

the Working Group

AquaOP•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

i've been meaning to write new tutorials I've just been juggling around 6 projects at once

MMaxine the Working Group

Perksey•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

it used to be the ARB - API Review Board

AAqua yeah, that could work quite well

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

i feel like this line from zig zen shows some of my reasonings for being against that

 * Only one obvious way to do things.

 * Only one obvious way to do things.

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

we want people to use these safer types because they would be less error prone

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

and more readable

AAqua if it's anything, these are the overloads I provide for creating a buffer in pie...

Kai•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

yeah this makes sense. Overloading void* and IntPtr is a bit tricky (and in modern code you'd prefer nint but whatever)

Lyris the Kitori•8/4/23, 9:09 PM

we dont want newcomers to just fallback to the unsafe API when they would probably be happier with the safer one, if they learned how to use it

LLyris the Kitori i feel like this line from zig zen shows some of my reasonings for being against...

Kai•8/4/23, 9:10 PM

Yes, but this is out the window given all we're doing is providing one way for each way C# provides us

KKai yeah this makes sense. Overloading void* and IntPtr is a bit tricky (and in mode...

AquaOP•8/4/23, 9:10 PM

yeah i have been moving towards nint, I wrote this code before I was aware that IntPtr == nintIntPtr == nintwhich is why it is like it is, i should change it

Kai•8/4/23, 9:10 PM

like there's multiple obvious ways to represent a data structure that does this in C#, and so we provide one obvious way to go from each possible obvious data structure design to one obvious call pattern in Silk