On Fri, Nov 05, 1999 at 04:02:45PM -0600, Stephen J Baker wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Nov 1999, Jon Leech wrote:
> > I've revised the extension specification (attached) following our
> > straw poll to make it a GLX function returning context-independent
> > pointers. As a logical consequence the function should return any of GL,
> > GLX, or GLU functions.
>
> Ack!
>
> Not GLU - programs don't have to link to GLU at all.
It's not important to me whether it allows GLU or not, although I do
not believe there has been any agreement on this point.
> If we *do* allow it to return GLU functions, you'll have
> to define what happens if GLU isn't linked...and it'll
This is no different than not linking against libGLU and calling a
GLU function in the app - the static link fails, or the runtime link
fails, or the app gets some sort of implementation-dependent trap or
exception.
"Linking" and "libraries" and all other implementation-dependent
mechanism/SDK/runtime issues are *not addressed* and *should not be
addressed* by OpenGL at the specification level. Nothing except common
practice causes GL and GLX functions to be placed in the same library,
and nothing prohibits an implementation from, say, splitting
functionality up into '-lGL -lGLext -lGLX -lGLXext -lGLU -lGLUext' - so
the same runtime environment issues may occur while querying GLX or GL
extensions. The specification must allow for this, which is another
reason for having GetProcAddress return a detectable error IMO.
Jon Leech
SGI
