3 Copyright (C) 2013 Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>
4 Copyright (C) 2013 Daniel Hartwig <mandyke@gmail.com>
6 This document is part of Figl.
8 Figl is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
9 under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
10 published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
11 License, or (at your option) any later version.
13 Figl is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
14 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
15 or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General
16 Public License for more details.
18 You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
19 License along with this document. If not, see
20 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
24 ** Complete the high-level GL binding.
26 *** Bind newer versions.
28 Would be nice to bind newer versions as well, while keeping the
29 compatibility profile.
31 The newer versions are backwards compatible with only rare exceptions
32 where some function's behaviour (but not prototype) is subtley
33 redefined. To support newer versions in a simple way we can export
34 all bindings and the user effectively chooses which version they use
35 by their choice of procedures.
37 Exporting particular profiles is a nice addition to this.
39 ** Complete the high-level GLU binding.
41 ** Complete the high-level GLX binding.
43 ** Complete the high-level GLUT binding.
45 *** Do not keep alive callback pointers indefinitely.
47 Perhaps by moving the gc-protect mechanism to the high-level bindings,
48 and track which callbacks are active on each window and globally.
50 Users of the low-level bindings can still use the foo-callback-*
51 helpers, but must assume control of pointer lifetime. Such an
52 approach permits great flexibility for alternative high-level
53 interfaces to reuse the low-level bindings.
55 ** Write an EGL binding.
57 There is a wip-egl branch with upstream documentation.
61 To facilitate passing data to buffer objects. Rather than dealing
62 with bytevectors, offsets, and strides directly, we can use a
63 packed-struct. and field pair to compute the arguments for
64 vertex-pointer and friends (size, type, stride, and pointer).
68 - make-structure-descriptor (r7rs-large):
69 http://trac.sacrideo.us/wg/wiki/StructuresCowan
71 : (define-structure my-vertex-type
72 : (position 'f32 3 position-ref position-set!)
73 : (normal 'f32 3 normal-ref normal-set!)
74 : (color 'u8 4 color-ref color-set!)
75 : (non-gl-data 'f32 2))
76 : (define foo (list->structure my-vertex-type ...))
77 : ;; (set-vertex-pointer FIELD BV)
78 : (set-vertex-pointer position foo)
79 : (set-color-pointer color foo)
80 : ;; position, normal, etc. are identifiers bound to the required
81 : ;; field specs. by the define-structure expression.
83 - define-gl-array-format (cl-opengl):
85 Specifically maps each component to an OpenGL array type (one of
86 vertex, color, normal, ...). This permits automatically binding an
87 entire structure to the relevent array pointers.
89 Additional per-component options include:
90 - named access to sub-components (e.g. vertex x, y, z);
91 - whether values are normalized on assignment.
95 ** Implement rest of spec parsing module.
97 To parse functions (gl.spec, etc.), enums, and typemaps.
99 ** Do not export meta-enumerations (version-2-1, etc.).
101 These are listed in the “Extensions” definition (enum.spec) and are
102 defined only to indicate the version or extension that introduces
103 various symbolic constants. In theory, all useful constants that
104 appear in version-2-1, for example, also appear in at least one other
105 enumeration which is an actual data type as referred to by gl.spec.
107 They can still be used to provide versioned interfaces and profiles,
108 there is just no need to export them as enumerations at run time.
110 Need to make sure all required symbolic constants will still be
111 accessible before removing these.
113 ** Make using enumerations implicit.
117 : (gl-begin (begin-mode triangles) ...)
118 : (gl-matrix-mode) => 123
122 : (gl-begin #:triangles ...)
123 : (gl-matrix-mode) => #:modelview
125 and lists of symbols for bitfields.
127 Enumeration type checking (i.e. does gl-begin accept #:foo?) can be
130 *** Type checking by Guile.
132 Before this can be done we must parse gl.spec to know which enums to
133 apply for each procedure argument. _Probably_ foreign-types can no
134 longer be syntax either.
136 Requires also some manual overriding and mapping as there is some
137 inconsistency between gl.spec, gl.tm, and enum.spec. For example,
138 gl.spec occasionally refers to an enumeration type that is not listed
139 in enum.spec, or is listed under another name.
141 *** Type checking by GL.
143 Most GL procedures already check the range of enum and bitfield
144 arguments, and flag an invalid-enum error as appropriate. We can rely
145 on this and create a single, super-enumeration to convert to and from
148 This may incur a notable performance hit due to the large number of
153 ** Mangle low-level binding names.
155 Probably we should do this only if this low-level bindings are good
156 enough. In practice this means that output arguments should be natively
157 supported, and they low-level bindings should check errors as
160 ** TODO Document the naming convention.
162 Specifically we should document when a name changes significantly,
163 like when to use a "set-" prefix and the abbreviation expansions
164 ("accum" -> "accumulation-buffer", "coord" -> "coordinates").
166 Getting this done early will permit implementing the policy more
169 ** Maybe drop the "gl-" prefix for high-level bindings.
171 The names for most gl, glu, etc. procedures are unique enough to not
172 conflict with each other, and most Scheme names generally. Removing
173 the prefix will make names where an additional prefix is used (such as
174 "set-") much more natural.
176 Users with specific namespace concerns can use selective and renaming
181 ** Figure out how to incorporate low-level bindings into the
184 Often-times the high-level bindings just duplicate information from the
185 low-level bindings, but poorly. To do this, we'd have to make a map of
186 how to organize the low-level bindings, probably according to their
187 section in the specification.
189 ** Mangle enumeration names to link to the enumerator documentation.
191 ** Give an @anchor{} to each API element so that we can link back and
196 ** examples/README explaining the layout.
200 Language bindings typically provide ports of the standard examples, to
201 demonstrate usage patterns and their own unique style.
203 http://www.sgi.com/products/software/opengl/examples/index.html
205 Implement at least a few of these, their licencing is permissive
206 enough and they have been widely ported to Free Software language
209 ** More interesting demos.
215 ** Web page for documentation?
217 Both of these point towards hosting on savannah at some point. Figl
218 could become a GNU project but it will not have copyright assignment.