Re: Offscreen plotting in OpenGL

[Shai Ayal]

On Aug 12, 2011 3:58 PM, "Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> 2011/8/11 John W. Eaton <address@hidden>:
> > On 11-Aug-2011, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> >
> > | So there's one outstanding wishlist item for making the OpenGL
> > | backend default for 3.6, and that's offscreen plotting.
> > |
> > | I asked around, and apparently it's now easier to do this than it
> > | was 3 years ago, and framebuffer objects are the way to go. It
> > | doesn't sound terribly complicated from my initial perusal of the
> > | subject. Should we "officially" (whatever that means) add this to
> > | the 3.6 release goals?
> >
> > It's definitely needed.
> >
> > Does this have anything to do with printing? As I recall, printing
> > also requires a display? Does that make printing somehow tied to
> > screen (or framebuffer) resolution?
>
> AIUI, no, it doesn't require a display (I don't know if it requires a
> running X server anyways),
gl2ps requires an opengl context. This is provided by the operating system gui component (wgl in windows, agl for apple and glx in X). Without a running X server (in gnu/linux) you won't be able to run gl2ps, and this is basically why we don't have offscreen printing.
Shai