Well... this seems to turn on a few flames... so let me put some of this to
rest.
For anyone to say OpenGL is "niche", and does not apply to everyday apps, I
again remind you of iChat and the OS X Panel. Granted it has only recently
found prominence in the desktop but it is quickly making way as OGL hardware
acceleration becomes standardize (has been for some time).
To look back at the past decade and say "look desktops are all 2D", not
realizing it has to do with memory and CPU/GPU issues, which are no longer
issues is simply wrong.
The next decade of desktops, more importantly GUI (Graphical USER <-- hello!!!
Interfaces) WILL have a blinding array of 3D widgets which will be like eye
candy to most users, and as they see it they will want it more and more.
I do NOT work at a facility which requires 3D visualization to accomplish its
tasks, but users are starting to ask and want. "Can I do a walkthrough of our
warehouse to see how much material I have?", "Can we have a little computerized
white box, with a virtualized pallet to do color matching in?" This has NOTHING
to do with scientific engineering or "niche" market. It has to do with the
future of interface design. I work in a ink manufacturing plant, and by that
argument, we should mix it all by hand, since that is how they did it 5000
years ago! 2D is NOT the end of all GUIs. It simply is not! R2 space can not
hold as much date/widgets/whatever as R3 even if the axis were infinite! they
(users) want 3D buttons that pop, role, jump, and wink at them too. They want
there pictures to start bending, bouncing, and getting all organic on them.
To say that GTK does NOT need OGL, is to say they sun is not going to rise in
the morning. To say that GTKGLext (a great tool to be sure) is good enough, is
to slap a hand in the face of all of use who see where this is going.
The greatest problem with the linux community (one I myself am having to learn
about) is this indelible ego that the data and function has to be correct and
nothing else. Sorry if the user can not visually keep up or understand what
you present, it won't make a difference how good the app works in the back, it
IS the eye candy that gets the user to use it. GtkTreeview in 3D? I can thing
of a dozen categorization applications in seconds.
FYI - OS X is a FreeBSD engin, with NextStep as its windowing system. It uses
OGL IN the windowing system (quartz / composer), and it is the hottest desktop
on the market. No one, and I mean no one, has even come close!
And lets not forget all the work that is being done on Compiz why? For the
masochism of it?!? No! Because that is where the future of desktop are, in 3D
space!
IMMHO, if Gtk is to keep up, as the cross platform interface it promises to be,
it will need OGL to be fully modularized or integrated somehow. I don't even
think GtkGLExt is that far, other than the OS X side of it, which with demand
will certainly improve.
P.S.the comment: " Ah. You are such a loser. Go away.", has no business on this
forum, the point is a good one, and your minimization of it, a poor show of
understanding.
EMAILING FOR THE GREATER GOOD
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> Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 19:48:06 +0100
> From: y...@physics.muni.cz
> To: jose.carlos.pere...@ist.utl.pt
> Subject: Re: GtkGLExt (was Re: Gtk 3.0)
> CC: gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org
>
> On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 04:22:36PM +, Carlos Pereira wrote:
> > We must atract more scientifc/engineering applications for Linux and
> > GTK, because this is exactly the kind of stuff that enterprises and
> > universities are demanding.
> >
> > If we have fantastic operating systems and desktop environments in the
> > free software world, but most of the scientific/engineering aplications
> > only run in Windows/Mac OS X, people will be forced to use them, even if
> > they would rather prefer to use Linux/BSD... I have many friends in this
> > situation...
>
> I'm afraid you explain it from your viewpoint. But looking at your
> reasoning from the `desktop' viewpoint there are troubles.
>
> 1) Objective. There will never ever be a scientific `killer app'.
> Every little branch of science, or even an individual scientific
> problem, has specific needs. Hence the applications are inherently
> scattered and each individual app is used only by a small group of
> people. Even the `universal' commerical tools such as Matlab are far
> from being universally used [among scientists]. This makes hard to see
> sci/eng apps matter *at all*.
>
> 2) Subjective. Do your graphs have round corners and include the user's
> IM status? Can your data acquistion software synchronize the data with
> an iPod? Are your reports summarized to 140 characters and sent to
> Twitter? No? Does your app help people with some difficult to
> understand and much more difficult to solve problems instead of
> facilitating idle chit-chat while consuming power for visual effects?
> Ah. You are such a loser.
