Thanks for all the great info Ronie!
On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Ronie Salgado <ronies...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I am also interested on this topic. For what I saw from NBOpenGL, Igor was > generating the bindings from older specifications of the OpenGL API. Those > older specifications are in a deprecated DSL. > > The newer versions of the OpenGL APIs are available in some XML files > provided by Khronos Group. In this link > http://www.opengl.org/registry/#specfiles another link for a subversion > repository( > https://cvs.khronos.org/svn/repos/ogl/trunk/doc/registry/public/api/ ) > with those XML files is available, along with the formal OpenGL specs. > > Because they are now in those XML files, we need new generator for OpenGL > 3.3-4.0. > OK. Where is the old generator? I will look into it if nobody is already doing so. Another question, a core profile context is really needed? Why not starting > working with a compatibility profile?. OpenGL API deprecation does not > depend on us, it depends on what the Khronos Group and the graphics card > maker decide to do. In the x86 Desktop, the three big companies cannot > remove the compatibility profile, otherwise lot of older video-games will > stop working. > > Also, there are lots of graphic cards, specially older integrated in > laptops that are only OpenGL 2.x. A better bet is to support at least the > subset available in OpenGL 2.x that is also available in the core profile. > Good points. Nevertheless, as I understand it, OSX does not provide a compatibility profile. You get core 2.1, 3.2, or 4.1 with OSX 10.7 or greater (released 3 years ago). Currently Pharo always gets OpenGL 2.1 core. So we are working with an API that was deprecated 6 years ago that can only take advantage of a fraction of the power of our GPUs and is discouraged/unavailable on mobile platforms. Maybe that is enough for some things but I'd like to see the door opened for more. This makes me wonder what the compatibility philosophy of Pharo is. Is it a goal that once something is developed in Pharo it will work unchanged on all future Pharo versions? I imagine one of the liberating aspects of VMs is that they can evolve, even incompatibility, because old software can continue to run on old VMs. But I am new to Smalltalk/Pharo culture so please educate me. Maybe we need a GL3ViewportMorph to live along side GLViewportMorph. > As for plans for OpenGL support, normal and accelerated GUIs, I am working > in OSWindow. > I have read a little of this -- very exciting! > OSWindow provides support to manage native operating system windows purely > from image side. With Igor, we made a custom image and VM for Linux in > which we removed almost everything graphic related from the VM. The only > support needed in the VM is a small check for event presence in the VM > heartbeat. > > For OSWindow, we made initially a XLib based back-end. To reduce > maintenance efforts for Windows and Mac OS, I made a new backend based in > SDL2. It is quite complete and I have tested mostly in Linux. For Windows I > could make it work, not perfect so it needs more testing and a complete > removal of the old Win32 drivers. I don't have a Mac for testing, but Alex > is going to help me there. > If there is something I can do to help with the Mac I would like to. I have to tell the CMakeVMMaker to also build SDL2 before building, instead > of having to build/install it manually. After that I think that we can > start integrating into Pharo 4. > > As for OpenGL, SDL2 gives me a multi-platform abstraction for creating a > window with an OpenGL context. I already made it work with NBOpenGL, the > only tricky part is dependency order when loading the stuff in the image. > Yes, SDL2 is the way to go. In fact, I already started making a new 3D graphics engine Pharo, to > rewrite Roassal 3D on top of this one in the near future. Soon I will be > posting some screen-shots of this engine. > Sounds interesting! > With this graphics engine, I am also going to try to make an Athens > backend, for accelerated vector graphics. Vectorial graphics with OpenGL > are very hard to do fast, specially self intersecting bezier curves. > Stencil based testing is simple, fast, supported and efficient for this job. > Very nice. Is Athens used to render the main UI elements (windows, buttons, bitmaps, text, etc?). It's not clear to me how the OSWindow work will result in a faster Pharo UI. On OSX, at least, underneath everything is already an OS window that supports GL and other accelerated calls but the Pharo graphics primitives don't take advantage of this. Won't they need reworking? Greetings, > Ronie > > > 2014-05-30 11:10 GMT-04:00 Sean P. DeNigris <s...@clipperadams.com>: > >> darrinm wrote >> > Oh, and NBMacGLConstants is lacking necessary constants. Is it manually >> > created or generated somehow? >> > >> > - darrinm >> >> >> >> >> >> ----- >> Cheers, >> Sean >> -- >> View this message in context: >> http://forum.world.st/OpenGL-3-0-tp4760914p4761009.html >> Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at >> Nabble.com. >> >> >
