7 replies to this topic

[jmg3]

i''m just picking up opengl programming on linux. i know c/c++ and some gl already but no almost nothing about X or DRI. my question might not even make sense, but is the green book now outdated due to the recent addition of DRI into the mix? is it still worth it to pick it up? also, do you even need to know about glut and X if you''re using the SDL? (if it''s relevant, i''m mostly interested in scientific modelling/visualization with an eye toward game physics.) thanks!

[TeTE]

What is the green book? Anyway, as I know, to make an opengl program you don''t need to know anything about DRI. You need to know about glx, wich is the "glue" between opengl and XWindow.

But if you use glut, then don''t worry about x (glut is platform independent).

[Obelix]

The green book can be good if you are interested in GLUT but it does not cover the latest development of X. If you are using GLUT do you not need to know any X programming and I think it is the same with SDL. It does not seems to be hard to use native X if you want to take a look at the ports of the NeHe tutorials to GLX.

TeTe, the green book was written by Mark Kilgard and covers GLUT and X.

[jmg3]

thanks for the replies folks. i ended up going to the source:
http://reality.sgi.com/mjk_asd/glut3/glut3.html
and downloading mark''s glut specification (pdf). it''s from november 1996. using that, along with the red book (opengl programming guide, 3rd ed) i think i''ll be set for a little while with glut.
sdl looks good. the site ( http://www.libsdl.org ) looks well maintained and i''m hearing good things about sdl so maybe i''ll be using that down the road. from what i can tell, i''ll definitely want to stay away from directly accessing X.

[Obelix]

The pdf file is good but it does not cover the latest 3.7 functions so it is probably a good idea to install the man pages also.

[jmg3]

hmm... i thought i replied to this... something must''ve been amiss.

thanks obelix,

tell me, how can i get the man pages to work correctly. i''ve downloaded the glut sources. i''ve now got a /usr/local/glut3.7/man/glut directory (i think that''s what it is---i''m at work on NT) with a pile of .man files in there. i''ve done chmod +x *.man and can get them to work with man ./glutManFile.man

how can i get them to work from any directory, and w/o the .man at the end?

[Obelix]

I guess the proper way is to edit some enviroment variable like MANPAGEPATH or similar. I just gzipped them and placed the result in /usr/man/man9/

[Obelix]

Oh, it seems like I added a 9 to the file name. This was something I did a long time ago. My manpages has the name pattern like glutMainLoop.9.gz

I guess the number like 9 is depending on what directory you place them in.