Re: eXene and openGL

Well - diggiing a little more deeply I found 3 or 4 callbacks, in  
timer and in the audio stuff, but not too bad, and not in the event  
handling.

However one problem that I am having with nlffi, which is really a C  
problem, is that things like SDL will include _a_ _lot_ of other  
files, most noticeably stdio.h.

ml-ffigen is not robust enough to deal with the C include insanity  
and will often bail out.

  My strategy so far, and it's painful, is to run gcc -E and then  
pick and choose to create a cut-down file to work with.  Not only is  
it painful, but platform-specific (or can be).  So if I do this for  
the Mac, somebody might have to recreate the files for x86.

How are you dealing with this ?

Brian


On Jan 4, 2007, at 8:56 AM, John Reppy wrote:

> Right.  SDL requires writing the event loop in the application, so  
> it doesn't use callbacks.
> As part of my sml3d project, I've been writing a new mlton/sdl  
> library, but it is a pain,
> since mlton's FFI doesn't handle C structs.  SML/NJ should work  
> fine with this API.
>
> 	- John
>
> On Jan 3, 2007, at 11:53 PM, brian wrote:
>
>> You know - SDL doesn't seem to require callbacks.  I was almost  
>> sure that it did.
>> This makes SDL a really nice way to go.  Fast direct graphics  
>> interface, without callbacks.
>>
>> I looked at the MLton interface to SDL (again - I already did some  
>> time ago) but it doesn't seem to be doing much.
>>
>> hmmmm....
>>
>> Shouldn't take much work to see what nlffi thinks of the SDL  
>> header files :-)
>>
>> Brian
>>
>>
>> On Jan 3, 2007, at 7:06 AM, John Reppy wrote:
>>
>>> EXene is now being supported and developed by Ally Stoughton and his
>>> students,
>>> so they may be able to help you get the examples working.
>>>
>>> I'm not particularly optimistic about supporting OpenGL in EXene.
>>> While it would
>>> be possible to implement the GLX wire protocol [Historical note:  
>>> when
>>> I was actively
>>> working on eXene in the 90's, the protocol was not documented, but
>>> SGI eventually
>>> released it] in eXene, there are significant performance
>>> disadvantages to using
>>> that protocol.  For real-time rendering, you want a DRI-style
>>> implementation, but
>>> I don't know how to support such an approach in eXene.
>>>
>>> For a while, I've thought that the low-level parts of eXene ought to
>>> be rewritten
>>> to sit on top of a C shim (XCB is an obvious choice).  Doing so
>>> should make it easier
>>> to connect to more modern X extensions, such as the render extension
>>> and GLX.
>>>
>>> An alternative approach is to build a GUI library on top of GLUT (or
>>> SDL).  I've been
>>> working on this project using mlton, since SML/NJ doesn't have
>>> callback support, but
>>> I'm hoping that we'll get the necessary hooks in SML/NJ soon.
>>>
>>> 	- John
>>>
>>> On Jan 3, 2007, at 6:40 AM, brian wrote:
>>>
>>>> So as I slog through X code to make openGL useful it occurs to me
>>>> that using eXene with openGL tied in would be a really nice way to
>>>> go. eXene3D :-)
>>>>
>>>> There are a couple of problems:
>>>>
>>>> 1 I still can't get eXene examples to work.
>>>>
>>>> 2 Is there a gotcha in terms of the X interface which eXene uses  
>>>> and
>>>> openGL ? eXene uses the socket level interface and I'm not sure  
>>>> what
>>>> that implies for use with openGL.  Wthout thinking too hard, I  
>>>> don't
>>>> think it implies anything.  I simply invoke glX calls using the
>>>> display, window, etc.. I get from the eXene interface.
>>>>
>>>> Solving 1 is just a matter of time and persistence on my part.
>>>>
>>>> Understanding 2 is much more important.  Since I'll probably  
>>>> have to
>>>> do considerable work for 1, I don't want to get to the end of the
>>>> path and find out that there will be some problem connecting eXene/
>>>> openGL.
>>>>
>>>> At first I thought that the use of threading might be a problem,  
>>>> but
>>>> since they are "user level" threads, doesn't seem like that  
>>>> should be
>>>> an issue.
>>>>
>>>> Any opinions ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Brian
>>>>
>>>>
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