Very, Very simble newb installation and setup Question

[Me6]

I am wanting to learn openGL and I have some questions:

1. I have a ati radeon 9800 pro grafics card, is there anything I need to install for openGL programming?

2. How do I create programs? Do I use notepad or another text editor and just save the file format as .ogl or something? (For example perl uses .pl file extention)

Thanks

[ZbuffeR]

To develop in OpenGL, you need :

1. a programming langage. OpenGL is just an API, that is, commands to be called via a langage such a C, C++, Java, Python, Delphi, Basic, etc.

2. a compiler for the langage.

3. an OpenGL implementation. Software OpenGL is shipped with windows since win95 OSR2, hardware OpenGL is brought by good recent 3d card drivers (not standard Microsoft ones), for you go to http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html .

4. docs, hopefully you can found them on www.opengl.org (http://www.opengl.org) , click on 'Coding resources', then 'FAQ', then 'Getting started'.

5. Read. Start coding.

6. Read a lot more. Code more.

7. then search this board for answers.

8. then ask this board for more answers.

Have fun with OpenGL !

[Me6]

Thank you very much!