newbei here, where can i get free OpenGl programing tools?

im gettin a geforce2 mx finally so im gettin back into programing, anyone know wherei can get a, preferably free, OpenGL program coder thingy, i dont really know the name .
i got glut3.7 right now but i dont know how to make it run under win98, any suggestions?

and im only 17 so dont use huge words, use simple words
ive never done this before, ive only done work in autocad, cadkey and mill, and i know that OpenGL programing is a totally different thing so any help id appreaciate

Take a look at:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs148-00-fall/programming_windows.html

Probably you should start by getting a C compiler and learning the language. Microsoft Visual C++ is sort of the standard in C/C++ development tools right now, but if you don’t feel like shelling out a couple hundred bucks for it, a freeware compiler like gcc should do. Once you learn the C language, get the OpenGL headers and library files and you should be set.

j

whats gcc?

would c+ work fine for now or is it totally different than c++?

ok i found gcc, but im totally confused on how ure supposed to compile and place everything in the right directory. and i dont know any code right now so this might take awhile to learn, how long does it usally take? and is there any good reading material on compiling, on the web or a book or somethin?

OK, I’ll assume you are using windows.

After you have installed gcc, add the path that it is installed in to autoexec.bat. So you should have a line in autoexec.bat that looks something like:

SET PATH=[stuff that depends on your system];C:\GCC\BIN

assuming you installed it into the directory GCC.

After that’s done, to compile a C source file you go into MS-DOS, go to the folder where the source file is, and type:

gcc -c “filename.c”

This creates an intermediate file called “filename.o” To create an .exe from this, type:

gcc -o “exename.exe” “filename.o”

That should be it.

There are ways to automate the compiling process so you can compile multiple source files into one .exe with one command, but I wouldn’t worry about them right now. There are probably tutorials on the net that describe how to use gcc better than I can, but I don’t know exactly where.

As for learning the C language, the best way is to get a good book. I would recommend Kernighan & Ritchie’s “The C Programming Language” as a reference. It covers pretty much everything in C. There are also online tutorials out there, but once again, I don’t know exactly where they are.

Learning the C language properly can take a while, or it might not take long at all. I learned most of it in about two or three months.

(Sorry for the length of the post)

j

thanx and yes i am using win98