[Edu-sig] The fate of vpython

[John Zelle]

On Monday 09 October 2006 6:56 pm, Arthur Siegel wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-10-09 at 18:41 -0500, John Zelle 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.
>
> 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.

Right. But VPython really requires very little in the way of windowing 
context. I was thinking that GLUT (available by default in every OpenGL 
platform I've ever run across) would be sufficient. If PyOpenGL runs, GLUT is 
probably available.  I have no idea off the top of my head whether a PyOpenGL 
+ GLUT implementation of VPython is possible. To me, the main worry is how 
threading works across platforms.

>
> 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.
>
>
> Togl across platforms???

Is Togl another dead end? Is anyone supporting it? Personally, I'm not all 
that excited with TK as a cross-platform solution anymore. It's been 
difficult to keep even my little graphics library stable on TK across 
Windows, Linux, and Mac.

--John

-- 
John M. Zelle, Ph.D.             Wartburg College
Professor of Computer Science    Waverly, IA     
john.zelle at wartburg.edu          (319) 352-8360