help me about Nate Robin's sgi example - null

hello, everyone! In Nate Robin’s example code of null.c which he wrote when working at sgi, there are three statements in sub function display as follows:

glRasterPos2i(0, 0); // statement 1
glBitmap(0, 0, 0, 0, raster_x, raster_y, NULL); // statement 2
glDrawPixels(256, 256, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, (GLvoid*)image);
// statement 3

glBitmap seems drawing nothing but moves the current rater position for next drawing, so when I using a single statement to replace statement 1 and statement 2 just as
glRasterPos2i(raster_x, raster_y);
I think this should do the same functionality. However, it is not.
What’s the problem?
Thanks.

The complete code of null.c is as follows:

/*
null.c
Nate Robins, 1997

An example of using null bitmaps to place the rasterpos at
positions that may be clipped.

*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#if defined (APPLE) || defined (MACOSX)
#include <GLUT/glut.h>
#else
#include <GL/glut.h>
#endif

unsigned char image[2562563];
unsigned char bitmap[1] = { 0 };
int raster_x = 32;
int raster_y = 32;
int old_raster_x;
int old_raster_y;

void
reshape(int width, int height)
{
glViewport(0, 0, width, height);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glOrtho(0, width, 0, height, -1, 1);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
}

void
display(void)
{
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

glRasterPos2i(0, 0);
glBitmap(0, 0, 0, 0, raster_x, raster_y, NULL);
glDrawPixels(256, 256, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, (GLvoid*)image);

glutSwapBuffers();

}

void
mouse(int button, int state, int x, int y)
{
y = glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_HEIGHT) - y;

old_raster_x = x - raster_x;
old_raster_y = y - raster_y;

}

void
motion(int x, int y)
{
y = glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_HEIGHT) - y;

raster_x = x - old_raster_x;
raster_y = y - old_raster_y;

glutPostRedisplay();

}

void
keyboard(unsigned char key, int x, int y)
{
if (key == 27)
exit(0);
}

int
main(int argc, char** argv)
{
int i, j;

glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGBA);
glutInitWindowPosition(50, 50);
glutInitWindowSize(320, 320);
glutInit(&argc, argv);

glutCreateWindow("null");
glutKeyboardFunc(keyboard);
glutDisplayFunc(display);
glutReshapeFunc(reshape);
glutMotionFunc(motion);
glutMouseFunc(mouse);

/* create a pretty color ramp */
for (j = 0; j &lt; 256; j++) {
    for (i = 0; i &lt; 256; i++) {
        image[(256 * j + i) * 3 + 0] = 255-i*j/255;
        image[(256 * j + i) * 3 + 1] = i;
        image[(256 * j + i) * 3 + 2] = j;
    }
}

glutMainLoop();
return 0;

}

I don’t see what the problem is. This code is used to demonstrate using null bitmaps to place the rasterpos at positions that may get clipped.

If you position it using glRasterPos2i(raster_x, raster_y) and raster_x or raster_y is outside your viewport (e.g. one of them is negative or larger than 320 in this case) then the rasterpos will get clipped and nothing is drawn. Using glBitmap apparently circumvents this issue.

What’s the problem? clipping.

I didn’t get the point that raster_x and raster_y must be positive when act as arguments of glRasterPos2i, and I get it now :slight_smile: