From: frenchc AT cadvision DOT com (Reham)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp,comp.graphics.api.opengl
Subject: Re: IN DEFENCE OF MICROSOFT (I shouldn't have done this... :(
Date: 3 Sep 1997 16:05:18 GMT
Organization: CADVision Development Corp.
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Well, I suppose I should apologize for that last article. I wasn't trying to 
say D3D was superior than OpenGL and nor was I trying to sound like I'm an 
expert in the subject. I did, in all honesty, read through most of the OpenGL 
spec which I got from DEC, which might be difficult to believe given my 
comment about no Immediate Mode OpenGL (which someone -- Paul 
Shirley -- gratefully pointed out, as well as calling my article bs, which is 
mostly true as well) -- however, for some reason it was my impression that 
there was no parallel to the DrawPrimitives in OpenGL. Can someone clear me 
up on this? Really, I did read most of the OpenGL spec; but it seems to me it 
used codestreams to define polys and such, which isn't the same thing as 
calling a function to ``draw a poly here, based on data here'' which is what 
I am used to thinking in. I am well aware there is no Retained mode in OpenGL 
and as I said in the previous article I think Retained mode is not such a 
great idea. I suppose I put my foot in my mouth, then the other. Landed on my 
ass.

However, the post was originally a reply to someone saying Win95 was no good 
for low-level API, and don't really think this is fair. DirectX doesn't seem 
bad at all, really -- if you can forgive the 33 meg SDK download, and of 
course there is more than just D3D. I understand some of the weaknesses of 
D3D, and while this isn't a fair comparison at all, Win95+D3D beats out 
X11+Mesa on my non-3D-accellerated non-fpu 486.

Other comments that were made re X11 were sort of random, I know that it is 
far technically superior, especially considering it is built on Linux; 
however I still think it is ugly -- primarily because there is no set 
standard for it's look and feel; e.g., Netscape looks a whole lot different 
than many other apps which have the plain old b/w look -- is this Xaw? -- 
which I don't really mind, actually I find netscape's interface much uglier.

I feel kind of stupid writing this letter; I'm not really so arrogant to 
think I made any kind of impact with my little rant, I just felt sort of out 
of place making the comments I did. I am a big fan of djgpp and am developing 
a 3D api (something like Plush, I imagine) which will suit my needs and have 
ports for djgpp+Allegro, CygWin32+DirectX, and probably also gcc+Mesa (X86 
Linux at least). In that order. So my experience with 3D is pretty limited, 
however I am an excellent C++ programmer and don't usually make such fool-ass 
posts as that last one.

- Calvin -