Posted by xghost on Aug 22, 2015; 2:28am
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Can-JOGL-be-used-without-requiring-GLAutoDrawable-instances-tp4034953p4035106.html

gouessej wrote

By the way, we don't have the same sense of humor.

Hi gouessej,

I'm sure we don't. How did this come into the conversation and why is it relevant?...

I'm not sure what problem you seem to have here. Just guessing here, but if you're referring to this comment "yes, I dare disturb you by mentioning a competitor :D", the only reason I made it was because one of the devs/admins in this site had made a similar comment in a separate thread that I read before posting this one. (Not sure which thread it was and I'm not going to go look for it again.)

No one seemed offended there, and I don't see why you should somehow feel offended here...

gouessej wrote

The next time I see a post insisting on mentioning repeatedly a competitor, I might ask others whether I should edit or delete it (we're in democracy, I don't make this kind of decision alone except for the obvious spams).

No one is "insisting" on anything and it seems like a stretch to take something like this in the way you seem to be taking it. My post is clearly about how to do something with JOGL here... and this is certainly not a discussion, debate, or comparison-type thread.

I took some time to originally explain myself is quite a bit of detail and I'm obviously not as familiar with JOGL as all of you are, so I hope that it's understandable if the few sentences I've been receiving as responses (which I do appreciate!) are not immediately as clear to me as they may be to you.

gouessej wrote

This forum is a cool place to talk about JogAmp,

Then let's keep it that way, yes? It seemed to be going well until I came across this latest post of yours... and I'm not sure what I may've said that seemed to justify such a defensive reaction here, other than the fact that I mentioned a different library... which was simply mentioned for the sake of completeness and shouldn't cause any problems...

gouessej wrote

the aim is to avoid being bothered with useless flame wars and debates

Frankly speaking, I'm not sure where you see the "flame war and debate" here. Respectfully, if this has come across as some kind of "flame war" or "debate", then you should know that you've misunderstood/misinterpreted the thread and my posts from the start.

gouessej wrote

unlike in numerous other forums and I want to do my best to keep it cool and friendly for JogAmp users.

By saying that, you're implying that this thread is not "cool and friendly for JogAmp users". I thought it was already that way, but you seem to be interpreting things quite differently, and certainly not in the way that I intended.

First, I hope this clarifies my intention and how I intended my posts to be interpreted here. You seem to be taking a defensive posture simply because a different library was mentioned... which seems unreasonable and unjustified, IMHO.

Secondly, I'd understand if I had come here to ask questions about another lib, but that's not what I did. As already mentioned in one previous post, I'm not here to question or debate why JOGL decision "X" was made or not made in JOGL or anything of the sort. I'm not here "bashing" JOGL or trying to "promote" something else or anything like that.

I'm just trying to accomplish a goal that I (hopefully) described with enough clarity at first, but that I'm happy to further clarify if needed or if there're questions.

Since I'm not here for debates or anything of the sort, this is the only post I'll make regarding this topic and your reaction and I hope we can go back to talking JOGL, if you're still interested.

If what I'm trying to accomplish is not clear, please do ask away and I'll try to clarify as best I can.

Sven Gothel wrote

Just to make this long story maybe shorter:

It is 'just' about *work*.

Using the assisted API, i.e. GLAutoDrawable/GLEventListener
allows you to rely on our OpenGL + resources lifecycle support
and certain 'quirks' required to allow seamless operation on all
platforms, e.g. Android and OSX/AWT special cases.

Hi Sven,

I hear you. Perhaps the title is, in hindsight, a bit misleading. I understand why I want to use the assisted API and I wholeheartedly agree. To briefly illustrate the issue I'm trying to understand how to manage with JOGL, consider this:

// You have something like this in a client
RenderSystem rs = ...
rs.enableDepthTesting(true);

Internally, you'd expect this method to end up calling gl.glEnable(GL.GL_DEPTH_TEST) and might be tempted to start by writing GL4 gl = GLContext.getCurrentGL().getGL4() to use glEnable.

The client may want to issue this kind of call outside of void display(GLAutoDrawable) and does not take a GL instance as a parameter (i.e. not rs.enableDepthTesting(gl4, true) to keep the JOGL details hidden from the client.)

Of course the 'RenderSystem' would be implementing GLEventListener and, therefore, display(...), but the client is not expected to 'see' those and when display(...) is called automatically it ends up being called from a different thread anyway (i.e. AWT-Event-Queue) so it wouldn't work b/c being called directly, it would come from the main thread, etc. which would cause the GLContext.get* to return null or throw GLException for not being current.

Sven Gothel wrote

The assisted model also supports certain features like:
  - Suspend an GLContext (make offscreen, destroy drawable -> re-animate).
  - Swap On- offscreen drawable
  - ..

If you control GLDrawable/GLContext yourself,
you operate on a much lower level.
This gives you more freedom, but also implies a much
higher responsibility, since you can crash things more easily.
Everything is available for this low level hacking
and you can of course copy/paste our code pieces from
GLAutoDrawable, GLCanvas etc. However, maintenance might become
your burden here.
This approach may also end up in just reinventing the wheel :)

In case you dislike the assisted path b/c of a missing
but essential feature, we can discuss it and add it together.

I agree and definitely want to avoid doing that stuff. There's nothing I "dislike" about JOGL, if this is the way my posts have somehow been interpreted --quite the opposite, actually. I'm just trying to understand that the correct way of using JOGL for what I'm trying to achieve is and this is the part where I'm not sure my understanding has been that great.

I'm open to possibility that I may need to go back several "steps" and re-design something, but I need to better understand where my goal and JOGL's proper usage meet.

I apologize if there's anything I've said here that was not too clear and ended up causing the confusion that I think I had to clear up in this post and hopefully, I'll get the benefit of the doubt in the future.

Best regards,
-x

[EDIT: Finished a sentence.]