Posted by Demoscene Passivist on Aug 12, 2011; 9:27pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Learning-JOGL-and-related-topics-tp3167983p3250415.html

>In short I wanted to know if I could just open up notepad and start coding a vertex shader.
>Then I could save and name it vertexShader.vert or something similar. Then attach that file
> to my JOGL application to use that as my vertex shader.

Exacly. No special toolset needed for shader development. The shaders are written as plaintext files and then handed over to the driver via OpenGL. OpenGL then compiles the shaders for u, so Notepad is just fine, though I would recommend stg with at least syntax highlighting to avoid typos.

>Although I was wondering if there was a library on the internet that contains vertex and fragment shaders;

Sure there are tons of shaders out in wild. As always u are welcome to have a look at my repository on github with tons of shaders and the corresponding setup code for JOGL2. Other than that I can really recommend the website for the orange book wich I used as a reference site when I started using shaders back in the days.

As a second step I would recommend a professional environment for shader development. It really speeds up the whole process and is a good sandbox for new shader "adventures"  I myself use Rendermonkey for that purpose.