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Subsections


Introduction

What is the intention of gltools ?

You have program and want to make it some pictures. You are developing 3D code and are unable to find any errors in your data arrays. You look for a replacement of GKS which no one seems to have anymore.

Many graphics packages, as the GLUTtoolkit (which has nearly the same intentions as gltools), AVS and GRAPE provide a perfect environment.

But for them, one has to register existing code as a callback and/or one has to translate the existing data structures into those of the graphics package. This may be fairly time consuming and difficult. Also, one wants to control the graphics package via the existing code, not vice versa. This is where the gltools package comes in.

It should enable one to get easy access to the OpenGL world on-line from one's own data structures within existing code.

It has been tested with OpenGL on SGI Irix 6.x and Compaq Tru64 UNIX as well as with the Mesa package of Brian Paul. It should compile with any ANSI-C compiler.

What is not the intention of gltools ?

It is intended to keep this package compact. There are two main reasons for this:

So, it is until now not planned to incorporate menu control into the package. An easy (and most preferred by the author) way to provide menus would be a callback to a scripting language like tcl which could be equipped with a menu system, but this makes sense only when the whole code is embedded into such a language.

Sample code

glwexample-appctrl.c

contains a simple test program with a GL window in application control mode.

glwexample-evctrl.c

contains a simple test program with a GL window in event control mode.

glrexample.c

contains a simple test program with a GL rendere.

glview.c

contains a sample program which can be used to render function data on rectangular meshes. It is used as a test program for glrnd and glmesh.

To Do


Up: gltools - an OpenGL based on-line graphics toolbox
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