Under Windows, gwlGetProcAddress(“glBlendEquation”) and gwlGetProcAddress(“glBlendEquationEXT”) both work (provided that the drivers support GL_ARB_IMAGING, of course). Why the two different versions?
My guess is that “glBlendEquationEXT” is provided for backwards compatibility, but when is functionality from an extension promoted from “EXT” to non-“EXT”?
A possiblity I can think of is that the EXT postfix is used until the function becomes core functionality in some (higher) OGL version. But would that mean that extensions introduced just to enable OS’s which do not support the core features of that higher version to access its functionality would not have any “EXT” functions? Perhaps there are no such extensions.
Under Windows, you have to use the extension mechanism to access core functionality from versions above 1.1 (before you start flaming me, read http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1929.asp ) . If some extension would be introduced just to enable Windows applications to access functionality already to be included in the core in a future version, would that extension have “EXT” functions? I mean, there’s nothing to be backwards compatible with…
Help appreciated