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Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."

SDL supports Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. The code contains support for AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, SymbianOS, and OS/2, but these are not officially supported.

SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, C#, D, Eiffel, Erlang, Euphoria, Go, Guile, Haskell, Java, Lisp, Lua, ML, Objective C, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Pike, Pliant, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, and Tcl.

SDL is distributed under GNU LGPL version 2. This license allows you to use SDL freely in commercial programs as long as you link with the dynamic library.

Table Of Contents:

# Simple DirectMedia Layer

1. What is it?
* SDL is a free cross-platform multi-media development API
* Used for games
* Used for game SDKs
* Used for emulators
* Used for demos
* Used for multimedia applications

2. What can it do?
* Video
* Events
* Audio
* CD-ROM audio
* Threads
* Timers
* Endian independence

3. What platforms does it run on?
* Linux
* Win32
* BeOS
* Unofficial ports, ports in progress

# Using the Simple DirectMedia Layer API

1. Initializing the library
2. Video
* Choosing and setting video modes (the easy way)
* Drawing pixels on the screen
* Loading and displaying images
3. Events
* Waiting for events
* Polling for events
* Polling event state
4. Sound
* Opening the audio device
* Loading and playing sounds
5. CD-ROM audio
* Opening a CD-ROM drive for use
* Playing the CD-ROM
6. Threads
* Create a simple thread
* Synchronizing access to a resource
7. Timers
* Get the current time, in milliseconds
* Wait a specified number of milliseconds
8. Endian independence
* Determine the endianness of the current system
* Swap data on systems of differing endianness