Linux OpenGL GUI Extension Viewer

Hi Guys

I was thinking of creating a GUI Linux OpenGL Extension Viewer and hosting it over at sourceforge.net and using either a BSD or GPL license for it. It would be fairly similar to Realtek-VR windows/mac one, only obviouslly mine will be completely free in all regards.

does anyone actually think this would be handy or is everyone happy using glxinfo from the command line?

also what is everyone’s opinion on using GTK+ or QT … i.e which one would you prefer it to be written for??

Cheers
Tim

That would be nice. I don’t like command line tools.
The GUI doesn’t need to be fancy.
Display GL version, vendor, GLX info in a few boxes.

Make a list box for the extensions or a tree view, but I prefer a selectable list.

I had done this a long time ago
http://www.geocities.com/vmelkon/openglcpa.html

Scroll to the screenshots.
I made it so that you can type a partial extensions name like, vertex_prog, hit search, and it finds GL_ARB_vertex_program from the list.
Hit search again, it finds GL_NV_vertex_program, etc.

It was handy to quickly check for extensions back then. I waited for a certain extension to be added, so after a driver update, I did a quick search like this.

Personally it doesn’t really interrest me, glxinfo is fine, also checking the extensions from inside my programs is also fine.

But I would point that even if I prefer using C++ than C, using GTK+ should be best (or try to look for GTK-mm a C++ version of GTK).

You could also start from existing projects like V-man stippled. But I’d advise you to use a library that takes care of extensions, which might help people more than a simple GUI showing what glxinfo already is saying.

Originally posted by jide:
Personally it doesn’t really interrest me, glxinfo is fine, also checking the extensions from inside my programs is also fine.

That’s fine, each to there own

Originally posted by jide:

But I’d advise you to use a library that takes care of extensions, which might help people more than a simple GUI showing what glxinfo already is saying.

not sure what you are getting at, are you suggesting i create yet another OpenGL extension library?

No, not creating one another extension library, only use one of them, and create your GUI in front of the one you’ll choose (like glew).

It’s just something that went threw my mind, it might not be a so good idea at all.

ok i have created a sourceforge project for this
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kglext

there is no content yet, obviouslly this is only a day old :wink: …i decided on making it a QT/Kde app. Anyay i call it KDE Opengl Extension Checker (kglext)

here is an early screenshot to show the basic layout of the app
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=155026

Something along those lines would be good.
I would not put a demo there.
Instead of limitations, call it capabilities (caps)

the demo really should be re-named to test or something like that. It’s opensource so if you don’t like the “test”, easy to remove it :wink:

Sounds like a good idea to me. Some suggestions / wishlist items:

  • search functionality within the extension list (possibly with regular expressions)

  • additional separate display of the availability of important functionality (e.g., “GLSL: Yes”, “FBOs: Yes”)

  • facilities for handling the often multiple and parallel installations of GL versions on Linux. This could include the display of the path/filename of the GL library which was queried for the extensions, a possibility for explicitly specifying a certain library path (using a file dialog or a commmand line parameter)

  • and this would be a great bonus: A direct linking from the extension list into the documentation on the (online) OpenGL extension registry. I think there is some HTTP/web functions in Qt which could be used for this

Joshua

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