Raster Position And Clipping

How do I draw glBitmap() or glDrawPixels() primitives that have an initial glRasterPos() outside the window's left or bottom edge?

When the raster position is set outside the window, it's often outside the view volume and subsequently marked as invalid. Rendering the glBitmap and glDrawPixels primitives won't occur with an invalid raster position. Because glBitmap/glDrawPixels produce pixels up and to the right of the raster position, it appears impossible to render this type of primitive clipped by the left and/or bottom edges of the window.

However, here's an often-used trick: Set the raster position to a valid value inside the view volume. Then make the following call:

glBitmap(0, 0, 0, 0, xMove, yMove, NULL);

This tells OpenGL to render a no-op bitmap, but move the current raster position by (xMove,yMove). Your application will supply (xMove,yMove) values that place the raster position outside the view volume. Follow this call with the glBitmap() or glDrawPixels() to do the rendering you desire.