Fahrenheit graphics API - Fahrenheit graphics API Fahrenheit was an effort to create a unified high-level API for 3D computer graphics. It was designed by Microsoft, SGI and HP to unify Direct3D and OpenGL. Much of the original Fahrenheit project was adbandoned, and SGI eventually gave up on attempting to work with Microsoft. In the end only the scene graph portion of the Fahrenheit system was released, now known as XSG, which disappeared shortly after release. Microsoft had licensed OpenGL from SGI in the mid-1990s to be put into their Windows NT operating system as its basic 3D system. At the time OpenGL was rapidly becoming the de-facto 3D standard on workstations, and as MS was attempting to position NT as a workstation-class system, OpenGL was a requirement. Confusing matters.
Fahrenheit - Fahrenheit Alternate meaning: Fahrenheit graphics API The degree Fahrenheit is a unit of temperature named for the Danziger physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, who proposed it in 1724. In the Fahrenheit scale of temperature, the freezing point of water is 32 degrees, and the boiling point is 212 degrees. Hence a degree Fahrenheit is 5/9ths of a kelvin or degree Celsius, and -40 degrees Fahrenheit is equal to -40 degrees Celsius. Fahrenheit established zero degrees as the temperature at which an equal mixture of ice and salt melts (some say he took that fixed mixture of ice and salt that produced the lowest temperature); and ninety-six degrees as the temperature of a healthy human body. Initially, his scale had only contained 12 equal subdivisions, but then later.
OpenGL - OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a specification defining a cross-language cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 3D computer graphics (and 2D computer graphics as well). The interface consists of about 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three dimensional scenes from simple primitives. It is very popular in the video games development industry where it competes with Direct3D (on Microsoft Windows). OpenGL is also used in CAD, virtual reality, and scientific visualization programs. Efficient implementations of OpenGL (leveraging graphics acceleration hardware to a greater or lesser extent) exist for Windows, many UNIX platforms, and MacOS. These implementations are generally provided by display device manufacturers and rely heavily on the hardware provided by that manufacturer. The open source library Mesa is a fully software-based.
OpenGL Performer - task to be performed in parallel in multiple threads. Performer also allowed the developer to describe the scene in terms of importance, with Performer culling out "unimportant" objects as needed in order to maintain rendering rates. Performer consists primarily of two libraries: the lower-level libpr and the higher-level libpf. The libpr library provides an object-oriented interface to high-speed rendering functions based on the concept of a pfGeoSet and a pfGeoState. A pfGeoSet is a collection of graphics primitives, such as polygons or lines. A pfGeoState encapsulates properties pertaining to a given pfGeoSet such as lighting, transparency, and texturing. The libpf library includes functions for the generation and manipulation of hierarchical scene graphs, scene processing (simulation, intersection, culling, and drawing tasks), level-of-detail management, asynchronous database paging, dynamic coordinate systems, environment models, light.
OpenGL plus plus - OpenGL++ is a set of extensions to the OpenGL 3D graphics system written in C++ that supports object-oriented data structures. The project started as the result of a partnership between SGI, IBM and Intel (and later DEC as well) to provide a higher level API than the "bare metal" support of OpenGL. Work on OpenGL++ ended when SGI decided to partner with Microsoft instead, leading to the Fahrenheit project, which also died. OpenGL++ (OGL++) was intended to offer a selection of routines and standardized data structures to dramatically simplify writing "real" programs using OpenGL. Instead of the programmer having to keep track of the objects in the 3D world and make sure they were culled properly, OpenGL++ would include its own scene graph system and handle many of the basic manipulation.
Open Inventor - is an C++ object oriented "retained mode" 3D graphics API written by SGI to provide a higher layer of programming for OpenGL, which forms the lower level of a complete system. Around 1988-1989, Wei Yen asked Rikk Carey to lead the IRIS Inventor project. Their goal was to create a toolkit that made developing 3D graphics applications easier to do. The strategy was based on the premise that people weren't developing enough 3D applications with OpenGL because it was too complicated, and that if 3D programming were made easier then more people would create 3D applications and SGI would benefit. Therefore, the credo was always "Ease of Use" before "Performance", and soon the tagline "3D Programming for Humans" was being used widely. OpenGL (OGL) is a low level library that takes.
API shim - API shim In computer programming, an API shim is a small library that converts one API into another. They typically come about when the functions of one API become a part of another, larger, library. In these cases the older API can still be supported as a thin layer on top of the newer, and more general, code. One example was the support of AppleTalk on Macintosh computers during the brief period in which Apple Computer supported the OpenTransport networking system. Thousands of Mac programs were based on the universal AppleTalk protocol, in order to support these programs AppleTalk was re-implemented as an OpenTransport "stack", and then re-implemented as an API shim on top of this new library. A less successful example occured when SGI repeatedly.
IBM PC compatible - BIOS using clean room design. Compaq became a very successful PC manufacturer, and was bought out by Hewlett-Packard in 2002. Manufacturers such as Xerox, Digital and Wang have been widely criticized for introducing PCs that were not hardware-compatible with IBM. It is not always appreciated just how fast the rise of the IBM clone was, and the degree to which it took the industry by surprise. Microsoft's intention, and the mindset of the industry circa 1980-1981, was that application writers would write to the API's in MS-DOS, and in some cases to the firmware BIOS, and that these components would form what would now be called a hardware abstraction layer. Each computer would have its own OEM version of MS-DOS, customized to its hardware. Any piece of software written for MS-DOS.
Hello world program - Common Lisp 1.16 Eiffel 1.17 Erlang 1.18 Forth 1.19 Fortran 1.20 Haskell 1.21 Iptscrae 1.22 Java 1.23 Logo 1.24 Lua 1.25 MIXAL 1.26 MSDOS batch 1.27 OCaml 1.28 OPL 1.29 Pascal 1.30 Perl 1.31 PHP 1.32 Pike 1.33 PL/I 1.34 Python 1.35 REXX, also NetRexx and Object REXX 1.36 Ruby 1.37 Sather 1.38 Scheme 1.39 sed (requires at least one line of input) 1.40 Self 1.41 Smalltalk 1.42 SML 1.43 SNOBOL 1.44 SQL 1.45 StarOffice Basic 1.46 Tcl 1.47 Turing 1.48 UNIX-style shell 1.49 Romanian pseudocode (UBB Cluj-Napoca) 2 Graphical User Interfaces - as traditional applications 2.50 C++ bindings for GTK graphics toolkit 2.51 Java 2.52 Qt toolkit (in C++) 2.53 Visual Basic 2.54 Windows API (in C) 3 Graphical User Interfaces - Web browser based 3.55 Java applet 3.56 JavaScript,.
History of Microsoft Windows - historians date this, the first appearance of a significant and non-Microsoft application for Windows, as the beginning of the success of Windows... Version 2 still used the real-mode memory model, which confined it to a maximum of 1 megabyte of memory. In such a configuration, it could run under another multitasker like DesqView, which used the 286 Protected Mode; alternatively Windows 2 could run in Protected Mode in its own right, which gave it access to up to 16 megabytes of memory. A provisional version then shipped, called Windows/386 (2.0 received the alternate name Windows/286), that included support for the 386 CPU's Enhanced Mode. Success with Windows 3.0 Microsoft Windows scored a serious success with version 3.0, released in 1990. In addition to improved capabilities given to native applications, Windows also.
GLUT - GLUT was written by Mark J. Kilgard, author of 'OpenGL Programming for the X Window System' and 'The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics'. Also, GLUT provides routines for drawing a number of geometric primitives (both in solid and wireframe mode), including cubes, spheres and the Utah teapot. GLUT is in the first place created to write rather portable code between operating systems (GLUT is available for many operating systems) and in the second place to make learning OpenGL more easy. Getting started with OpenGL programming while using GLUT takes only a few lines of code and you don't need any knowledge of operating system specific windowing API's. You can recognize a GLUT function by looking at it, they all start with the glut suffix. An example function.
DirectX - redistributed by game developers along with their games, but later it was included in Windows. DirectX 9.0 is the latest version of DirectX. The latest versions of DirectX are still usually included with PC games since the API is updated so often. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 DirectX APIs 2 External Links 3 Tutorial Sites 4 Forums on Direct X 5 See also 6 Reference Sites 7 Books on DirectX 8 Resource Sites 3d Graphics DirectX APIs The components comprising DirectX are: DirectX Graphics: comprised of two API's: DirectDraw: for drawing raster graphics. Direct3D (D3D): for drawing 3D graphics primitives DirectInput: used to process data from a keyboard, mouse, joystick, or other game controllers DirectPlay: for networked communication of games DirectSound: for the playback and recording of waveform sound DirectMusic: for.
DirectDraw - DirectDraw DirectDraw is part of Microsoft's DirectX API. DirectDraw is used to render graphics in applications where top performance is important. DirectDraw also allows applications to run fullscreen instead of embedded in a window such as most other MS Windows applications. DirectDraw uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the client's computer. DirectDraw is a 2D API. That is, it contains commands for 2D rendering and does not support 3D hardware acceleration. A programmer could use DirectDraw to draw 3D graphics, but the rendering would be slow compared to an API such as Direct3D which does support 3D hardware acceleration. As of DirectX version 8.0, DirectDraw was no longer updated and available directly in DirectX. Some of DirectDraw's functionality was rolled over into a new package called DirectX Graphics, which.
Direct3D - Direct3D Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX API. Direct3D is only for use in Microsoft's various Windows operating systems (Windows 95 and above) and the Xbox. Direct3D is used to render three dimensional graphics in applications where top performance is important, such as games. Direct3D also allows applications to run fullscreen instead of embedded in a window, though they can still run in a window if programmed for that feature. Direct3D uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the graphic board. Direct3D is a 3D API. That is, it contains many commands for 3D rendering, but contains few commands for rendering 2D graphics. Direct3D offers little software emulation for features not available in hardware. For example, if a program programmed using Direct3D requires pixel shaders and the graphics card on.
Abstract Windowing Toolkit - Toolkit (AWT) is Java's platform-independent windowing, graphics, and user-interface widget toolkit. The AWT is part of the Java Foundation Classes (JFC) - the standard API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for a Java program. Compare: Swing. External Links AWT homepage This article was originally based on material from FOLDOC, used with permission. Update as needed..
Application Programming Interface - Programming Interface An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of definitions of the ways in which one piece of computer software communicates with another. It is a method of achieving abstraction, usually (but not necessarily) between lower-level and higher-level software. One of the primary purposes of an API is to provide a set of commonly-used functions—for example, to draw windows or icons on the screen. Programmers can then take advantage of the API by making use of its functionality, saving them the task of programming everything from scratch. APIs themselves are abstract: software which provides a certain API is often called the implementation of that API. For example, one may look at the task of writing "Hello World" on a screen at increasing levels of abstraction: Do it all yourself:.
Arm0nia - a technique unconventionally different from other standard window managers. It uses a plugin based approach, offering a generic API for filesystem interface, graphics and sound. This project is currently working on the window manager called Nfores (Greek derivation meaning N times faster), developers terming it N4S. External sites Armonia project website.
BeOS - UNIX, a common misconception due to Be's inclusion of the Bash command shell), it is optimised for digital media work - digital audio, digital video, and 3D graphics and animations. Also unlike UNIX, it is a single-user operating system. It is multiprocessor capable and emphasizes high efficiency, modular I/O bandwidth and pervasive multi-threading for preemptive multitasking, graphical flexibility, and real-time responsiveness. It has an optimised 64-bit journaling and indexed file system called BFS, but rather than use a database BeOS relied on its low OS latencies to journal and query file attributes on the fly. A new multithreaded graphical user interface was developed on the principles of clarity and a clean, uncluttered design. The interface API was written in C++ for ease-of-programming. It has POSIX compatibility and access to a command.
Bridge pattern - good example use of the bridge design pattern comes from Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design by Shalloway and Trott. Say you have an abstraction, shapes. You want to have many types of shapes and each with its own properties but there are things that all shapes do. One thing you want all shapes to do is draw themselves. However, drawing graphics to a screen can sometimes be dependent on different graphics implementations or operating systems. You want your shapes to be able to be drawn on many types of systems but having the shape itself implement them all or modifying the shape class to work with different architechtures. The bridge helps by allowing you to create new classes that provide the drawing implementation. The, abstraction, shape class.
Carmageddon - collecting bonuses, damaging the competitors' cars or by running over pedestrians. In many countries (including England and Germany), the game when released contained zombies instead of people, as running over the undead was considered more acceptable to the general public. Unofficial "blood patches" were rapidly released by members of the community to replace the zombie graphics and sound with the more gory versions. The tag-line for the American release was "The racing game for the chemically imbalanced". Later on in 1997 an expansion pack entitled the Carmageddon Splat Pack was released. This added a lot of extra tracks and cars, and added support for GLIDE, the API used by the dominant line of 3D accelerators of the day, 3Dfxs Voodoo range. The other games in the series are: Carmageddon II Carmageddon.
