Talking About EGL In Mesa On Linux

[V!NCENT]

I thought the idea was to use EGL instead of something like GLUT or GLX.

Well the only reason that would be viable would be for embedded systems. Embedded systems will have Wayland in the future.

And you would also just shift the handeling from GLUT to the WM, making the WM do the GLUT work itself, which is pretty pointless to me. Or am I missing something here?

Also the presentation about mixing API's would make the advantages of EGL totaly redundant.

[yotambien]

As a non-native english speaker I still have problems with basic grammer and making my own sentences. However I have zero problems listening and reading english whatsoever.

I have yet to meat someone IRL that has more problems listening and reading english as opposed to writing and speaking the language

That depends on a number of things, but two of them are particularly important: your native language and the king of foreign language education you received. In the same way that it's relatively easy for an italian to learn spanish or portuguese, it's probably easier for, say, dutch people to learn english. Spanish has a grand total of 5 vocalic sounds, whereas english may have more than 20 depending on the accent. Learning to use such a complex musical instrument as your voice in completely new ways when you are no longer a kid isn't at all easy. Of course, it goes both ways, native english speakers usually have a hard time learning romance languages, although their set of problems include having to face a more rigid and complex grammar than their own.

As for the education, I remember doing basically grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing. Listening and speaking was almost absent, and in any case none of our teachers were native speakers. You can see now why a lot of people have a much higher command in reading and writing than in listening and speaking. But other factors count as well. If you are from a country with a language spoken by millions and millions, there's some lazyness towards learning that of others (english speaking people are the perfect example here), so movies get dubbed, absolutely everything is translated and in general there's some stupid sense of proudness and resistance to anything foreign. That certain nationalist movements across europe are, as of 2010, pushing in this same direction, is astonishing (but I'll stop with politics here : ).

[V!NCENT]

Subs are soooooo freaking anoying. When I watch an english movie without subs I usualy don't even notice it. It's only after a while that I think "Oh wait, this is english xD". But with subs it keeps distracting and so I keep looking at it while I don't want to -_-'

[yotambien]

Hehe, same here. Subtitles make you lazy. If there's something to read I'll read it even if I don't want to. But they are necessary if you don't understand the language or the accent is particularly strong (Brokeback Mountain anyone?). What really is disgusting is dubbing.

[V!NCENT]

Hehe, same here. Subtitles make you lazy. If there's something to read I'll read it even if I don't want to. But they are necessary if you don't understand the language or the accent is particularly strong (Brokeback Mountain anyone?). What really is disgusting is dubbing.

There's no dubbing in my country (only those stupid wash stuff commercials). Is dubbing still so strong in Germany?

The only time I found subs to be useful is in Alien 1 on DVD. Sometimes it's just like whispering >.< That realy sucks when you want to keep the volume down in case of explosions (not that ther are any in Alien...). Whoever thought that it was cool to have explosions sound 10 times as loud as the dialogs needs to be shot!

[BlackStar]

@Liam,
Why EGL? You'll end up combining it with OpenGL anyways...

OpenGL is divided in two parts: a cross-platform graphics API (that's OpenGL or OpenGL ES) and various platform-specific libraries (WGL, GLX, AGL, CGL, EGL).

To the cross-platform part OpenGL you need to use the correct platform-specific library to setup an "OpenGL context". This is a painful process, which is why libraries such as GLUT, SDL, GLFW exist.

So where does EGL enter? It was initially conceived as the equivalent of WGL/GLX/etc for embedded systems (OpenGL ES). However, OpenGL ES is slowly gaining momentum on desktop systems: Android/iPhone/etc development environments and WebGL is built on OpenGL ES and EGL. Recent Ati drivers ship EGL and so will Mesa in the future.

Wayland is using EGL instead of GLX simply because GLX is tied to the X11 API (and Wayland is not running on top of an X server).

[V!NCENT]

Wayland is using EGL instead of GLX simply because GLX is tied to the X11 API (and Wayland is not running on top of an X server).

But WM's are not running on embedded systems, so on the desktop it will be mixed with OpenGL. So why EGL there?

On the other hand; EGL replacing GLX isn't so bad.

[nanonyme]

Iirc according to Khronos page EGL isn't just about making OpenGL easier. It also does the same for OpenVG and it makes it possible to even use OpenVG and OpenGL on the same surfaces. (as far as what their add says)

[BlackStar]

But WM's are not running on embedded systems, so on the desktop it will be mixed with OpenGL. So why EGL there?

On the other hand; EGL replacing GLX isn't so bad.

On embedded systems you use EGL to create an OpenGL context, just as you'd use WGL on Windows and GLX on Unix.

Iirc according to Khronos page EGL isn't just about making OpenGL easier. It also does the same for OpenVG and it makes it possible to even use OpenVG and OpenGL on the same surfaces. (as far as what their add says)

It's not about making anything "easier", it's about interacting with the underlying OS. The OpenGL specs do not cover this part, which is where EGL comes in.

OpenVG/OpenGL/OpenCL interop is a related but different matter.

[nanonyme]

It's not about making anything "easier", it's about interacting with the underlying OS. The OpenGL specs do not cover this part, which is where EGL comes in.

OpenVG/OpenGL/OpenCL interop is a related but different matter.

Imo "not having to learn gazillion platform-dependent API's" is easier but whatever.
Besides, everyone already used GLUT for interacting with the underlying system with OpenGL. I personally see that OpenVG and the interaction as a bigger thing in EGL than just having yet another platform-independent abstraction for OpenGL|ES.