Jon Leech wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 12:09:48PM -0700, Michael I Gold wrote:
> > > From: Jon Leech [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > > Because such code is inherently nonportable by claiming part of a
> > > reserved namespace, yes.
> >
> > The whole point of making static declarations and glext.h mutually exclusive
> > to to effectively redefine the namespace so that these symbols are not
> > reserved.
>
> The namespace is 'gl*'; it's not a property of whether the ABI is in
> use or not, but a property of the OpenGL API itself.
>
> If there are apps infringing on this namespace today that will be
> affected by the particular structure of glext.h, that's important to
> know so we can try to cope with it - but nonetheless those applications
> are intrinsically unportable and are incompatible with the API.
>
Hello,
For those that don't know me, I am an OpenGL engineer at NVIDIA, working
on
Linux drivers.
The interesting point above is that it is arguable if an app is
infringing upon
the OpenGL API namespace.
If an app is using glXGetProcAddress, and getting a function pointer to
an
OpenGL API entry point, this pointer can be interpreted by the app
as a "part of the OpenGL API", and can easily justify a "gl" prefix.
(just noting that the term "namespace" is a bit vague when talking about
having
a subset of the API that is queryable).
So, I wouldn't call those apps right-of-the-bat unportable, since
according to the
author they could've been designed with portability in mind. However,
what the
author understood was not what the ARB wanted him to understand.
I don't think we can expect all app authors to understand this point,
even if it is
explicitly stated.
I believe this is a warning that the whole issue is getting too
complicated (in case
people haven't noticed) :-)
So, I believe we should try to cope with this issue somehow, in any
case, as a
protective measure.
--george
