Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: sehyo@netcom.com (Sehyo Chang)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk for 3Dapps
Message-ID: <sehyoD0Dp68.GH0@netcom.com>
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References: <Pine.SUN.3.90.941201091937.20206D-100000@aristotle.algonet.se> <3bu9o0$hle@isnews.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 07:37:19 GMT
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Jeff McAffer (jeff@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp) wrote:
: In article <Pine.SUN.3.90.941201091937.20206D-100000@aristotle.algonet.se> Gustaf Rosell <gustaf@algonet.se> writes:

:  >Has anyone used Smalltalk for 3D graphics applications like CAD or 
:  >anything similar. If so, is the performance OK? Did you use any 3D 
:  >library together with it?
:  >
:  >We started to use Smalltalk for educational purposes, that is to convert 
:  >C programmers to object oriented programming. The goal was of course C++ 
:  >in the end, but now we wonde if it is necessary. It is too easy to 
:  >write really bad code with C++.

: Personally, I think that ST is the ONLY reasonable platform for 3D
: graphics apps.  I've done some 3D graphics stuff with ST/X on a SGI.
: All you do is write an interface to the underlying GL or Inventor libs
: and boom, you get pretty much full speed 3D!  There are some
: mismatches so not everything is trivial but you can do some pretty
: impressive stuff.  Best of all, you have real objects to twiddle.

: BTW, OpenGL and OpenInventor are great libraries.  They are OO and
: quite well designed.  OpenGL is actually a non-proprietary standard.
: There are implementations available on SGI, Sun, HP, Windows NT, ...
: OpenInventor goes on top of OpenGL and is also becoming a standard.
: I'm not sure if any non-SGI platforms currenly support it.

: Also, ST/X has a interface to Vogle (Virtual GL?).  This is a generic
: X-based 3D lib that has a GL API.  It only supports wire frame though
: I think.

: JEff

With OpenGL running on WindowNT, you can pretty much write 3D class lib
on VisualWork, Digitalk and IBM's Visual Age. In fact, next generationn
of PCI video cards supports opengl with hardware based rendering.

Also, STA intends to release on SGI platforms (winter 1995).

This  raises another topic which is scientific/engineering/visualization
using Smalltalk.  I like to see maybe mailing list if there is enough
interest.

- sehyo

