[HOpenGL] GL utilities, toolkits, and questions..

[Nick Name]

> For a file manager (btw, I've found standard Haskell file access
> functionality very limited, but GHC's should be a lot more
> practical), you'll want 2d representations, orthogonal projections,
> and well-antialiased bitmapped fonts, so your requirements differ
> from mine - HOpenGL is a wide playing field!-) But GLUT's bitmapped
> fonts might be an acceptable starting point (just), and are just
> as easy to use as its stroked fonts.

I really want to use one of the binding to freetype.

My goal is to write a file manager (and then a panel, and a desktop
manager) which is fast to develop, and looks nice. I mean: to have the
feel of all 2d f.m., but to have 3d enhancements, like transparency,
animations and so on; using haskell could allow user-supplied code to be
compiled at startup and to be safe (I could limit user code to a monad
with few operations, which can't do IO for example).

So, I need opengl to render everything and maybe my project will become
some form of "cool widget set" itself.

For now, it's just an idea, nothing more. And I think that any amatorial
plan needs to have functionalities "on demand": I start writing a file
manager, and implement everything related, avoiding to bother of
anything else.

I'm not sure I will succeed, yes, but I want to try.

> Here are some relevant links

>   http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/henryj/code/index.html#FTGL
>   http://oglft.sourceforge.net/
> 

I've seen that oglft needs qt (which is not GPL on all platforms) to be
able to use unicode. It's a trouble. And FTGL does not mention unicode,
I 'm going to download it, surely.

> Bindings to one of the latter two would be really nice, but they
> also seem to add new dependencies (on the libraries themselves,
> and on the FreeType software they build on..).
> 

I don't think it's a problem. Reuse adds dependencies, but simplifies
coding.


> > Is this a good moment, or should I wait for FFI? 
> 
> If we believe the marketing hype, ghc-5.04.1 will have what
> it takes, and the FFI spec is stable (they say..).

Yes, but (as far as I know) ghc's FFI is not implemented in other
haskell systems (or am I wrong?). I mean, is there a standardized way to
call foreign code? Am I wrong?

Thanks for your explanations of the GLUT font system... it's better now
;) I didn't understand that rendering a character implicitly uses
"GLtranslate" so I didn't "pushMatrix" and "popMatrix"... it's really
better now :)

Vincenzo