Dave wrote: >> Just curious, is PyOpenGL easy to install for both Mac and >> Windows? I know >> it's dead simple on most Linux distributions. I think it's pretty >> easy for >> Windows, but have no experience at all on the Mac. > > Someone has made binaries for it (and a number of other Python add- > ons) at: > > http://pythonmac.org/packages/py24-fat/index.html
Which makes it as easy to install on OS X as on Windows. Building it from source can be troublesome, but is far more tractable in my experience than VPython. Art wrote: > Assuming that PyOpenGL *is* easy to install, we come back to the same > question - an OpenGL windowing context, be it pygame, be it wxWindows, > be it togl, be it gtkgl, be it whatever one does on Mac. PyOpenGL > provides the functionality, given a windowing context, not the > windowing > context. One problem with VPython is that it lives in a world all its own, unlike most Python libraries. PyOpenGL provides contexts for PyGame, for wx, and others (don't remember the whole list off-hand). If VPython (or VPython-lite) were built on PyOpenGL it would inherit all of these abilities. > And since much of the cross-platform complexity of vpython is on the > windowing context issue, I see that solving that issue for vpython > is a > more direct approach to solving the problem. But again, to me vpython > begins to lose its charm if we have to assume wxPython installed, or > pygame installed, or Panda3d installed. Well, there's assuming and there's assuring. A binary installer for VPython could simply make sure the necessary dependencies are installed. A setuptools-based build chain could do the same. > Togl across platforms??? The last time someone (Joe Heafner) tried to tackle this on the VPython list, Bruce Sherwood replied: > The fundamental issue has been discussed previously. Someone with Mac > experience needs to write a small module to create a window and handle > mouse and keyboard interactions. We have such modules for Windows and > for Linux/Unix (alas, OpenGL doesn't provide this functionality). > In the > absence of this native-mode window/interaction module, we have to limp > along using the Unix version, which means using X11. Since that is exactly what GLUT provides, and GLUT is available for every port of OpenGL that I'm aware of, I don't even know where to begin with such a comment. The other issue with VPython portability is threading. Instead of using Posix threads on Linux (which would *just work* on OS X), they pull in the gnome libraries for threading, adding an unneccesary dependency (in my opinion). GLUT alone doesn't really help with that, but it could be a (huge) step in the right direction. --Dethe "Why is Virtual Reality always posited in terms of space, when time is the only real commodity left?" --Rich Gold _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig