[cad-linux] Re: Viewport

Most toolkits displaying graphical data work in-process. This includes
X11, Coin, Hoops, and all those OGL widgets. If you really want to
have a renderer implemented in a different process than you CAD engine,
you might want to look at the RenderMan specs/implementations/driver.
But keep in mind that RenderMan was designed to make movies, not to displ=
ay CAD data.

> I'm writing a tiny modular CAD.  Since I'm not particularly fond of
> GUI programming and I'd like to concentrate on the engine, I'm looking
> for a simple viewport program that reads bi- or tri- dimensional data
> from the standard input and displays it.  Handling of image aspect
> must absolutely make sense for a CAD program (i.e. no squares 10 units
> wide and 2 units high ;-) as is common in dataplotting).  `Naming' of
> drawing entities and selective update would be a plus, but not
> strictly necessary.
>
> I tried `graph' from the GNU plotutils and I stumbled on the 10x2
> square problem.  I whipped a little interface with Ruby and Tk and,
> well, my above mentioned fondness for GUIs showed all its
> consequences. :-) Do you know of anything that resembles this
> description?  (Of course, if you happen to know your way among
> widgets, have a spare hour, and some curiosity for an experimental
> project, you're very welcome, too. :-))

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