On 10 Jun 2002, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:

> MH> Even moreso I hope nobody uses PEX.  ;o)
> 
> Could somebody smart explain why PHIGS was abandoned?  Is that because
> OpenGL is strictly more expressive?

My guess is that the reason OpenGL has a higher profile than PHIGS
is closely tied up with the success of SGI, but I couldn't say which
was the chicken and which the egg.

Ten years ago when I was playing with this stuff, implementations
of PHIGS were available (mostly software only) for a price, on Solaris,
whereas IRIX came with IRIX-GL (the predecessor to OpenGL) which included
hardware support where appropriate).
If you wanted fast 3D graphics on a general purpose unix workstation, 
Silicon Graphics was a better bet than Sun.

SGI then made a good job of marketing the OpenGL API (though screw-ups
allowed a rival to release the first implementation), and the 
Farenheight (sp?) deal with Microsoft must have damaged alternatives
such as PHIGS.

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison         Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna

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