Hi everyone, I'm new to the community so my first words go to everybody contributing to this great project. congratulations it's a great resource. Now off to my issue, I'm trying to start developing small linux apps using OpenGL both for 3D rendering and for 2D. I know there are a lot of implementations around like SDL, GLUT, QT, etc... But what i am really looking at is where to look for info on glx extension. I want to develop my own framework instead of just using SDL or other toolkit. I know most ppl will say 'why reinvent the wheel?' well, for starters because i won't be needing 50% of the things implemented in any of those libraries and because i've heard all those are pretty slow when compared to making a very small and focused framework. Right now i'm using GLUT for the event parsing and using my own Event-handling ontop of glut's one but that is only until i can find information on how to interact with x-windows directly. So please tell me something if you have some information of if you know where i can look into this. Thanks to all in advance and congratulations once more. Cheers cao_vadio

GLUT is not an ideal choice for gaming; it doesn't provide enough flexibility.

What I should stress, is that using GLFW, SDL, GLUT etc, has NO SIGNIFICANT EFFECT on runtime performance.

That's to say, these libraries are handling non time-critical stuff like context setup, message handling and input event despatch. These aren't things which should be taking a significant proportion of any game's time.

If GLUT isn't good enough for you, try GLFW, apparently it's a lot simpler than the others, because it focuses mostly on GL context setup and input handling, not anything else (like sound). Also, unlike SDL it's designed soley for use with opengl, so it doesn't have any code to setup legacy, non-opengl windows.

If you feel that GLFW is still too complicated, you could always make a "cut down" version of it. It's licenced under the "zlib" licence, which I believe is similar to BSD - you don't have to release the source code, even if you use a modified version in a commercial work.

Mark

well, performance might not be a big matter when using GLUT or any other development framework, but if i am to create my own event-handling system, why should i be building my own event-handling system ontop of glut's one if that's the only thing i'm using from glut? there's no real point in using a whole library just to make it easier to get event-handling input for my own event-handling scheme. Maybe i'm wrong but i find it easier to start my own library with simple function because i'm not after tons of functionality, only some simple things for now.

I'm trying to develop a very simple UI library totally in OpenGL with simple buttons and sliders controls, i think i can tackle this by myself directly. My post was more about getting some info on how to make the connection between Xlib and OpenGL by using the GLX extension.

Cheers