Editing Simple DirectMedia Layer (section)

=== Subsystems ===
SDL is divided into several subsystems:<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://wiki.libsdl.org/APIByCategory|title = APIByCategory}}</ref>

; Basics: Initialization and Shutdown, Configuration Variables, Error Handling, Log Handling
; Video: Display and Window Management, surface functions, rendering acceleration, etc.
; Input Events: [[Event (computing)|Event handling]], Support for Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick and Game controller
; Force Feedback: SDL_haptic.h implements support for "Force Feedback"
; Audio: SDL_audio.h implements Audio Device Management, Playing and Recording
; Threads: [[thread (computer science)|multi-threading]]: Thread Management, Thread Synchronization Primitives, Atomic Operations
; Timers: Timer Support
; File Abstraction: Filesystem Paths, File I/O Abstraction
; Shared Object Support: Shared Object Loading and Function Lookup
; Platform and CPU Information: Platform Detection, CPU Feature Detection, Byte Order and Byte Swapping, Bit Manipulation
; Power Management: Power Management Status
; Additional: Platform-specific functionality

Besides this basic, low-level support, there also are a few separate official libraries that provide some more functions. These comprise the "standard library", and are provided on the official website and included in the official documentation:

* ''SDL_image'' — support for multiple image formats<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/ |title=SDL_image 2.0 |website=libsdl.org |access-date=19 July 2014}}</ref>
* ''SDL_mixer'' — complex audio functions, mainly for sound mixing<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/ |title=SDL_mixer 2.0 |website=libsdl.org |access-date=19 July 2014}}</ref>
* ''SDL_net'' — networking support<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_net/ |title=SDL_net 2.0 |website=libsdl.org |access-date=19 July 2014}}</ref>
* ''SDL_ttf'' — [[TrueType]] font rendering support<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/ |title=SDL_ttf 2.0 |website=libsdl.org |access-date=19 July 2014}}</ref>
* ''SDL_rtf'' — simple [[Rich Text Format]] rendering<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_rtf/ |title=SDL_rtf 0.1 |website=libsdl.org |access-date=19 July 2014}}</ref>

Other, non-standard libraries also exist. For example: SDL_Collide on SourceForge created by [[Amir Taaki]].