Re: Obsolete libraries

[Francesco Orsenigo <xarvh@lombardiacom.it>]

Frédéric Lopez:
> I would say Glut is best suited for demos and little proofs of concept than
> games, but I really don't know it that much.
Not so much.
The very limit of GLUT is that it needs to control the main loop.
Some parts of PLIB are built on the top of GLUT.

> If you want to create 3D
> games, there are some librairies availables : SDL and Allegro (with
> AllegroGL) as you said or ClanLib.
SDL has bad video performances, and both SDL and ALLEGRO have great problems 
with the keyboard handler (at least on my computer).

> There are several game engines too like
> PLIB, Crystal Space, OGRE, NeoEngine, NeL, etc.
Except PLIB these are just engines built over OpenGL.

> It all depends on what you
> want to do, what languages you are familiar with and which level of control
> you need on the library.

I'm plain C programmer, sooner or later i must learn C++,
I need:
- fast double buffering, 640x480 / 800x600 or more at 16 or 32 bpp (SDL is 
faster with 32, maybe because no conversion is needed), 

-a good keyboard handler: i've obtained best results reading directly from a 
cooked terminal: it does even recognise iso_8859-1 characters like accented 
òàùèé, very important in the italian language

-a mouse pointer; some control on the pointer look would be also nice.

-Optionally, OpenGL for some hardware 2d rotation/zoom.

-Not an overwhelming amount of libraries: i'm still trying to figure out wich 
parameters i need to compile GLUT programs: while demos work, my programs and 
TuxKart abort with "GLUT: Fatal Error in [program]: OpenGL GLX extension not 
supported by display: :0.0"
The more libraries, the more compile problems.



Eero Pajarre:
> I received the last message on freeglut mailing list 2 hours and 20 minutes
> ago. So freeglut development has not really stopped.
freeglut developement or freeglut use?

Does freeglut have any advantage versus glut?
(I may suppose Steve implemented the glutLoopUpdate hack....)

> I am myself still using the "GLUT classic", but I am following freeglut
> mailings just in case...


Stephen J Baker:
> That's not true.  freeglut had a 'lull' in development - but it's very
> active right now.
>
> However, you could consider both GLUT and freeglut "finished".  Once
> a piece of software is finished, you don't expect a whole lot of traffic
> on it's mailing list!
Ok, I'll use glut or freeglut.
I was mislead by the "developement status: beta" i found on SF, i'd suggest 
you to switch to "production/stable".
[cut]

Well, thank all you very much, i'll use glut.
Francesco Orsenigo