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glut(3GLUT)			     GLUT			   glut(3GLUT)

NAME
       glut - an introduction to the OpenGL Utility Toolkit

SYNOPSIS
       #include <GL/glut.h>

DESCRIPTION
       The  OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) is a programming interface with ANSI
       C and FORTRAN bindings for writing  window  system  independent	OpenGL
       programs. The toolkit supports the following functionality:

	      Multiple windows for OpenGL rendering.

	      Callback driven event processing.

	      Sophisticated input devices.

	      An ``idle'' routine and timers.

	      A simple, cascading pop-up menu facility.

	      Utility  routines	 to  generate  various	solid  and  wire frame
	      objects.

	      Support for bitmap and stroke fonts.

	      Miscellaneous window management  functions,  including  managing
	      overlays.

       An  ANSI	 C  implementation  of	GLUT  for the X Window System has been
       implemented by the author. Windows NT and OS/2  versions	 of  GLUT  are
       also available.

BACKGROUND
       One of the major accomplishments in the specification of OpenGL was the
       isolation of window system dependencies from OpenGL's rendering	model.
       The result is that OpenGL is window system independent.

       Window system operations such as the creation of a rendering window and
       the handling of window system events are left to the native window sys‐
       tem  to	define.	 Necessary  interactions between OpenGL and the window
       system such as creating and binding an OpenGL context to a  window  are
       described  separately  from the OpenGL specification in a window system
       dependent specification. For example, the GLX  specification  describes
       the standard by which OpenGL interacts with the X Window System.

       The predecessor to OpenGL is IRIS GL. Unlike OpenGL, IRIS GL does spec‐
       ify how rendering windows are created and manipulated. IRIS  GL's  win‐
       dowing  interface is reasonably popular largely because it is simple to
       use. IRIS GL programmers can worry about graphics  programming  without
       needing to be an expert in programming the native window system.	 Expe‐
       rience also demonstrated that IRIS GL's windowing interface  was	 high-
       level  enough  that it could be retargeted to different window systems.
       Silicon Graphics migrated from NeWS to the X Window System without  any
       major changes to IRIS GL's basic windowing interface.

       Removing	 window	 system	 operations  from  OpenGL  is a sound decision
       because it allows the OpenGL graphics system to be retargeted to	 vari‐
       ous  systems  including powerful but expensive graphics workstations as
       well as mass-production graphics	 systems  like	video  games,  set-top
       boxes for interactive television, and PCs.

       Unfortunately,  the  lack  of a window system interface for OpenGL is a
       gap in OpenGL's utility. Learning native window system APIs such as the
       X  Window  System's  Xlib or Motif can be daunting. Even those familiar
       with native window system APIs need to understand  the  interface  that
       binds OpenGL to the native window system. And when an OpenGL program is
       written using the native window system interface, despite the portabil‐
       ity  of the program's OpenGL rendering code, the program itself will be
       window system dependent.

       Testing and documenting OpenGL's functionality lead to the  development
       of  the	tk  and	 aux toolkits. The aux toolkit is used in the examples
       found in the OpenGL Programming Guide. Unfortunately, aux has  numerous
       limitations  and its utility is largely limited to toy programs. The tk
       library has more functionality than aux but was developed in an ad  hoc
       fashion	and still lacks much important functionality that IRIS GL pro‐
       grammers expect, like pop-up menus and overlays.

       GLUT is designed to fill the need for a window system independent  pro‐
       gramming interface for OpenGL programs. The interface is designed to be
       simple yet still meet the needs of  useful  OpenGL  programs.  Features
       from  the  IRIS GL, aux, and tk interfaces are included to make it easy
       for programmers used to these interfaces to develop programs for GLUT.

PHILOSPHY
       GLUT simplifies the implementation of programs using OpenGL  rendering.
       The GLUT application programming interface (API) requires very few rou‐
       tines to display a graphics scene rendered using OpenGL. The  GLUT  API
       (like  the  OpenGL API) is stateful. Most initial GLUT state is defined
       and the initial state is reasonable for simple programs.

       The GLUT routines also take relatively few parameters. No pointers  are
       returned.  The only pointers passed into GLUT are pointers to character
       strings (all strings passed to GLUT are	copied,	 not  referenced)  and
       opaque font handles.

       The  GLUT API is (as much as reasonable) window system independent. For
       this reason, GLUT does not return any  native  window  system  handles,
       pointers, or other data structures. More subtle window system dependen‐
       cies such as reliance on window system dependent fonts are  avoided  by
       GLUT; instead, GLUT supplies its own (limited) set of fonts.

       For  programming	 ease,	GLUT provides a simple menu sub-API. While the
       menuing support is designed to be implemented  as  pop-up  menus,  GLUT
       gives window system leeway to support the menu functionality in another
       manner (pull-down menus for example).

       Two of the most important pieces of GLUT state are the  current	window
       and current menu. Most window and menu routines affect the current win‐
       dow or menu respectively. Most callbacks	 implicitly  set  the  current
       window  and  menu to the appropriate window or menu responsible for the
       callback. GLUT is designed so that a program with only a single	window
       and/or  menu  will not need to keep track of any window or menu identi‐
       fiers.  This greatly simplifies very simple GLUT programs.

       GLUT is designed for simple to moderately complex programs  focused  on
       OpenGL  rendering. GLUT implements its own event loop. For this reason,
       mixing GLUT with other APIs that demand their own event handling struc‐
       ture  may  be difficult. The advantage of a builtin event dispatch loop
       is simplicity.

       GLUT contains routines for rendering fonts and geometric objects,  how‐
       ever  GLUT  makes  no claims on the OpenGL display list name space. For
       this reason, none of the GLUT rendering	routines  use  OpenGL  display
       lists.  It is up to the GLUT programmer to compile the output from GLUT
       rendering routines into display lists if this is desired.

       GLUT routines are logically organized into several  sub-APIs  according
       to their functionality. The sub-APIs are:

       Initialization.
	      Command  line processing, window system initialization, and ini‐
	      tial window creation state are controlled by these routines.

       Beginning Event Processing.
	      This routine enters GLUT's event processing loop.	 This  routine
	      never  returns, and it continuously calls GLUT callbacks as nec‐
	      essary.

       Window Management.
	      These routines create and control windows.

       Overlay Management.
	      These routines establish and manage overlays for windows.

       Menu Management.
	      These routines create and control pop-up menus.

       Callback Registration.
	      These routines register callbacks to be called by the GLUT event
	      processing loop.

       Color Index Colormap Management.
	      These  routines  allow the manipulation of color index colormaps
	      for windows.

       State Retrieval.
	      These routines allows programs to retrieve state from GLUT.

       Font Rendering.
	      These routines allow rendering of stroke and bitmap fonts.

       Geometric Shape Rendering.
	      These routines allow  the	 rendering  of	3D  geometric  objects
	      including spheres, cones, icosahedrons, and teapots.

CONVENTIONS
       GLUT  window  and screen coordinates are expressed in pixels. The upper
       left hand corner of the screen or a  window  is	(0,0).	X  coordinates
       increase in a rightward direction; Y coordinates increase in a downward
       direction. Note: This is inconsistent with OpenGL's  coordinate	scheme
       that  generally considers the lower left hand coordinate of a window to
       be at (0,0) but is consistent with most popular window systems.

       Integer identifiers in GLUT begin with one, not zero. So window identi‐
       fiers,  menu identifiers, and menu item indexes are based from one, not
       zero.

       In GLUT's ANSI C binding, for most routines, basic types	 (int,	char*)
       are  used  as parameters. In routines where the parameters are directly
       passed to OpenGL routines, OpenGL types (GLfloat) are used.

       The header files for GLUT should be included in GLUT programs with  the
       following include directive:

       #include <GL/glut.h>

       Because	a  very	 large	window system software vendor (who will remain
       nameless) has an apparent inability to appreciate that OpenGL's API  is
       independent  of	their window system API, portable ANSI C GLUT programs
       should not directly include <GL/gl.h> or <GL/glu.h>.  Instead,  ANSI  C
       GLUT  programs  should  rely  on	 <GL/glut.h>  to include the necessary
       OpenGL and GLU related header files.

       The ANSI C GLUT library archive is typically named  libglut.a  on  Unix
       systems.	 GLUT  programs need to link with the system's OpenGL and GLUT
       libraries (and any libraries these libraries potentially depend on).  A
       set  of	window	system	dependent  libraries may also be necessary for
       linking GLUT programs. For example, programs using the X11 GLUT	imple‐
       mentation  typically  need  to link with Xlib, the X extension library,
       possibly the X Input extension library, the X  miscellaneous  utilities
       library,	 and  the math library. An example X11/Unix compile line would
       look like:

       cc -o foo foo.c -lglut -lGLU -lGL -lXmu -lXi -lXext -lX11 -lm

SEE ALSO
       glutAddMenuEntry, glutAddSubMenu, glutAttachMenu,  glutBitmapCharacter,
       glutBitmapWidth,	 glutButtonBoxFunc, glutChangeToMenuEntry, glutChange‐
       ToSubMenu,   glutCopyColormap,	glutCreateMenu,	  glutCreateSubWindow,
       glutCreateWindow,  glutDestroyMenu,  glutDestroyWindow,	glutDeviceGet,
       glutDialsFunc,  glutDisplayFunc,	 glutEntryFunc,	 glutEstablishOverlay,
       glutExtensionSupported, glutFullScreen, glutGet, glutGetColor, glutGet‐
       Modifiers, glutIdleFunc, glutInit, glutInitDisplayMode, glutInitWindow‐
       Position, glutKeyboardFunc, glutLayerGet, glutMainLoop, glutMenuStatus‐
       Func, glutMotionFunc, glutMouseFunc,  glutOverlayDisplayFunc,  glutPop‐
       Window,	glutPositionWindow,  glutPostOverlayRedisplay,	glutPostRedis‐
       play, glutRemoveMenuItem, glutRemoveOverlay,  glutReshapeFunc,  glutRe‐
       shapeWindow,  glutSetColor,  glutSetCursor, glutSetMenu, glutSetWindow,
       glutSetWindowTitle,  glutShowOverlay,  glutShowWindow,	glutSolidCone,
       glutSolidCube,  glutSolidDodecahedron,  glutSolidIcosahedron, glutSoli‐
       dOctahedron,  glutSolidSphere,  glutSolidTeapot,	 glutSolidTetrahedron,
       glutSolidTorus,	  glutSpaceballButtonFunc,    glutSpaceballMotionFunc,
       glutSpaceballRotateFunc,	 glutSpecialFunc,  glutStrokeCharacter,	 glut‐
       StrokeWidth,  glutSwapBuffers,  glutTabletButtonFunc, glutTabletMotion‐
       Func, glutTimerFunc, glutUseLayer, glutVisibilityFunc,

REFERENCES
       Mark Kilgard, Programming OpenGL for the X Window System,  Addison-Wes‐
       ley, ISBN 0-201-48359-9, 1996.

       Mark  Kilgard,  The OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) Programming Interface
       API Version 3 (the official GLUT specification).

WEB REFERENCES
       Main GLUT page
       http://reality.sgi.com/mjk/glut3/glut3.html

       GLUT Frequently Asked Question list
       http://reality.sgi.com/mjk/glut3/glut-faq.html

       The OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) Programming Interface API Version 3
       http://reality.sgi.com/mjk/spec3/spec3.html
       http://reality.sgi.com/mjk/glut3/glut-3.spec.ps.gz

       OpenGL and X: An OpenGL Toolkit article (PostScript)
       http://reality.sgi.com/mjk/glut3/glut.column1.ps.gz

AUTHOR
       Mark J. Kilgard (mjk@nvidia.com)

GLUT				      3.7			   glut(3GLUT)
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