Access to software surfaces like in 1.6? [aka reliable big sprites]

[netrick]

Sometimes I need to display one big loading screen. On my computer it's allright, but on some the max texture size is only 500x500 or 1000x1000. Splitting on few smaller images isn't that convenient. Does SFML 2 provide some access to software surfaces or any other solution to this problem? Because now sf::Image must be converted to sf::Texture before drawing.

I know there is big texture in thor library, however I really want to minimize dependencies.

[Laurent]

What Thor does is the best solution to this problem. So if you don't want to use it, you must either copy its code (if the license allows it) or at least get some inspiration from it.

By the way, there were no software surfaces in SFML 1.6, I don't know what your title refers to. And there's of course no software surface at all in SFML -- surfaces have to be uploaded to the graphics card at some point if you want them to be displayed.