[vtk-developers] VTK's OpenGL requirements

[Sean McBride]

On Sat, 5 Mar 2011 08:43:47 +0530, Karthik Krishnan said:

>Yes. There's a lot of deprecated stuff that's used extensively in VTK.
>
>However the standard supports two kinds of context creation, the forward
>compatibile and the backward compatible context. When one uses
>glCreateContext, as in VTK, it creates the backward compatible context that
>provides for everything in OpenGL 2.1.
>
>All manufacturers support the backward compatible context and explicitly
>mention on their website that its unlikely that they will deprecate and make
>life miserable for their customers. Also most of the OpenGL 3.x stuff is
>available in OpenGL 2.x via extensions and there's little missed by not
>creating a forward compatible context. Its unlikely that VTK will do
>anything about these deprecated functions; it'd be a humumgous task.

Karthik,

Thanks for the detailed reply!  Most helpful.

>> Put another way, if an OS/driver supported only non-legacy/non-
>> deprecated functionality, would VTK be OK?
>
>No. But its unlikely that any OS/driver would do that.

More precisely: it's unlikely they'd do that in the short/medium term. 
In the long term, it's a certainty.

Cheers,

-- 
____________________________________________________________
Sean McBride, B. Eng                 sean at rogue-research.com
Rogue Research                        www.rogue-research.com 
Mac Software Developer              Montréal, Québec, Canada