Basically, people had to learn GLSL and then unlearn a few things and replace them with SFML specific stuff. I find it more natural to use plain GLSL.
Mhm, yeah that is true I guess. I remember getting confused with the GLSL syntax a few times when I started using it together with the "sfmlglsl".
But without all the gl_Whatever stuff in the shader files it just seemed way more streamlined with the rest of SFML to me.
Maybe a solution would be to write a more detailed tutorial about pixel shaders in general?
I know it would cost you time, but you wouldn't have to go into syntax specific things like "put a ; after every statement". You'd just have to tell people: This is how you address pixels of a texture, this is how you manipulate it's color, and this is how you put it out to the screen. And maybe something like: "A pixel shader does that, and it works like this" etc.
Or you could somehow provide us with the preprocessing code so we can include it in our code ourselves?
But whatever, it isn't too big of a deal I guess. It's one of the few (if not only) 2D libraries where we even get to use pixel shaders so I'm happy