Re: The big divide - graphics contexts and window servers

[Jeff Teunissen]

Adam Fedor wrote:

[snip]

> On another topic, I've been trying to decide what is the best (first)
> graphics library I should implement in this structure. I've been leaning
> towards OpenGL, since it seems to be very well supported and does great
> antialiasing, among other things. And heck, you just can't waste enough
> time learning yet another graphics library ;-)
> 
> The only problem is that it doesn't natively handle fonts, which is
> really important. There are libraries that add this capability to
> OpenGL, but the best ones are written in C++, which means I'll have to
> write some cumbersome wrappers (ok, NOW I want Objective-C++!).

It's not that OpenGL doesn't handle fonts -- it's that it doesn't handle text
at all. This isn't a bad thing, you just have to _want_ to reinvent the wheel.

To get "fonts" in OpenGL, you draw them. Not a problem, but you need a font
renderer to do it, and then you get to decide what resolution you want to
upload it at, you get to upload the texture for each glyph (at whatever point
size you want) and display it manually.

OpenGL is designed for 3D, and it's not happy with 2D. Most GL implementations
don't accelerate 2D operations beyond throwing a quad on the screen, and some
even leave it incomplete.

Also throw in the fact that on most non-professional implementations/cards,
you can only have one direct-rendering window at a time.

For anything beyond games and professional or scientific graphics systems,
OpenGL is rather a joke.

Oh...where'd you get the idea that OpenGL did antialiasing at all? It doesn't,
that's beyond the scope of the specification.

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