Re: [Visualpython-users] label (text) on Linux

[Ari H. <ahe...@an...>]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Bruce Sherwood wrote:

> One of the high-priority VPython bugs is that the "label" object for 
> displaying text does not exist in the Linux version. Among other things, 
> this makes the autoscaled graphing be unusable. Is it possible that there 
> is someone in the VPython user community who is sufficiently knowledgeable 
> in Linux to be able to help with this? We are short of this resource at the 
> moment.

ok ok. relax :)

i *will* do this over break. two more weeks of filesystem (one evil malloc
memory corruption bug to figure out) and i'll be free and clear. i'll be in
boston over break hacking for ibm but i'll have time to do this.

i intend to take some research time next semester (need to keep myself over 60
units) so i should have real time to do plenty of stuff in the spring.

> 
> A main component of the problem is simply choosing a font. Here are some 
> notes from students who looked at the problem earlier in the semester but 
> ran out of time to devote to it.

the correct way to do this is with the gtk_gl_area font functions. never
verified that they work correctly.

> 
> --------------------------------
> 
> On Unix, an analogous function glXUseXFont() is available.  However, we 
> have been using the (higher level) GTK-GLArea widget instead of writing 
> directly to glX.  GTK-GLArea seems to only provide a draw_text() function, 
> not a way to obtain fonts.

not true, the function is (/me jumps on #debian and asks the apt bot) ...

gdk_gl_use_gdk_font(...)

i had a version that implemented this but it never actually rendered anything.
the situation needed further investigation. i was going to steal a binary font
(specified in source-code constants) from the GL red book and put that into the
code to verify it rendered. then i was going to try a simpler gtkglarea demo
(should be easy to start off with the little bit of gtk code in Visual, make a
simpler project, and plug some sample code from the red book in. first try it
with their font, then verify we can get a system font loaded).

all the stuff i said about name conflicts should be ignored. GLX functions are
*not* the correct way to solve this.


...

bug me about this. i'll have time, just don't let me forget.


ari