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I love reports. They are so full of brightness and hope...
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<p><i>January the 16th, 2000</i>
<p>It looks like both X11 and Win32 version have reached a comparable usability stage.
They are still missing many GLUT API 3 features, but the number is getting smaller and
smaller every day :)
<br><ul><li><b><font size=+2>input devices</font></b></li>
<p>Keyboard and mouse seems to work well. There is a big guess about the mouse buttons
count under X11 (always 3) -- I must remember to correct the menu activation code if
this shows to be invalid.
<p>None of the bizarre input devices found in GLUT API is supported (and probably won't).
<p>Steve Baker contributed the joystick code. It should work fine, as it did in PLIB,
but I haven't tested it out yet. It might not compile under FreeBSD, as I had to
convert it from C++ to C and had no possibility to compile it under FreeBSD (the Win32
version had some typos, but I've already fixed them).
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>pull-down menus</font></b></li>
<p>Pull down menus seem to work. The menu is displayed using OpenGL, so it requires
the window's contents to be refreshed at an interactive rate, which sometimes does not
happen. That's why I'll consider adding optional window-system menu navigation later.
For now -- extensive testing is what I believe should be done with the menu system.
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>fonts</font></b></li>
<p>Bitmap fonts support is done. However it would be good to add two more API functions
-- glutBitmapString() and glutStrokeString(), which should limit the quantity of state
changes when drawing longer strings.
<p>Good that somebody finally told me where to get the stroke fonts data from... XFree86
sources contain the ROMAN and MONO ROMAN stroke fonts data. For now stroke fonts are
rendered using the bitmap font GLUT_BITMAP_8_BY_13.
<p>What has changed is the way the fonts are specified. I moved to the GLUT's strange
way of supplying (fake for freeglut) font data pointers instead of some nice enums.
Hope it helps in achieving the binary compatibility between freeglut and GLUT.
<p>Added two new API calls: glutBitmapHeight() and glutStrokeHeight(), that return
a font's height. Hope this doesn't break the GLUT compatibility a lot.
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>mouse cursor</font></b></li>
<p>Need to have own cursor shapes, so that freeglut can pass them to the windowing
system, draw them using glBitmap() and/or texture mapping. The cursor shapes are very
probable to be found in XFree86 sources.
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>indexed color mode</font></b></li>
<p>This might work, however I have not tested it yet. glutGetColor/glutSetColor is not
implemented. Again, looks like a single Xlib call, but there might be some problems
with the colormap access. Need to switch into indexed color mode some day and check it
out (does Mesa 3.1 work with indexed color mode?)
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>planes</font></b></li>
<p>Overlays are not supported, but one of the GLUT conformance tests fails due to
glutLayerGet( GLUT_NORMAL_DAMAGED ) returning FALSE when the window has actually
been damaged.
<p>Layers would be good for drawing the menus and mouse cursor, as they wouldn't force
the application redraw to update their state.
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>init display string</font></b></li>
<p>I am in middle of the fight with the init display string. It's parsing OK, now it
would be cool to make it impress some effects on the display...
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>game mode</font></b></li>
<p>Is the game mode string parsed correctly?
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>geometry</font></b></li>
<p>Andreas Umbach has contributed the cube and sphere code. The teapot rendering is
done using free SGI code. I have also added the cone rendering, however it is missing
normal vectors (just as Andrea's wireframed cube does). All of the glut*hedron()
functions await to be implemented.
<br><br><li><b><font size=+2>obvious bugs</font></b></li>
<br><br><ol>
<li>
the visibility/window status function is a conceptual mess. I had to peer into the GLUT
source code to see what actually happens inside. It helped me a bit, but still one of
the visibility tests fails. This is probably the reason for which a window covered by
enlightenment status bar is marked as hidden and does not get redrawn.</li>
<li>
GLX 1.3 spec states that glXChooseVisual() et consortes are deprecated. Should move to
glXFBConfig.</li>
<li>
need to investigate what happens when initial window position is set to (-1,-1). GLUT
specification says, that the window positioning should be left to the window system.
And I do not know how to force it do so...</li>
<li>
I was told it is wrong to have the redisplay forced in the main loop. Is that right?</li>
</ol><br><li><b><font size=+2>not so obvious bugs</font></b></li>
<br><br><ol>
<li>some of the tests freeze because they do not generate the glutPostRedisplay() call
every frame. Again, this is somehow handled by GLUT, but I can't see how. And why.
<p>Looks like I've fixed it (or rather hacked it?) by forcing a redisplay every
frame, but this is no good and kills interactiveness of my console :D</li>
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