Shalabh Raizada <squeakdev at hotmail.com>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 10:39 AM
Subject: opengl in squeak


> Hi,
>
> Can anyone give me the dope on opengl in squeak? which url should i see
for
> info.
>
> www.cosmocows.com/OpenGL/ is a dead link.
>
Yes.

The openGL support for Squeak is called Balloon3D.
It is already in Squeak 3.4 and in Squeak 3.5, but it is
not part of Squeak 3.6. For Squeak 3.6 you have to
download Balloon3D separately. To do that, you do this:

1. start a fresh instance of Squeak 3.6
2. activate the internet connection of your
    computer if it is not permanently connected
    to a network that includes internet access.
    (I have to start a dial up program on my computer)
3. from the main menue, choose "open "
    and "Package loader"
    You have now to wait some time, but finally
    you should see a window that is titled "SM Package Loader"
    I a list view on the left you see the names of
    packages that you can download. Look for
    the package "Balloon3D", select it and
    bring up the menue of the list view. Select
    "download" in the menue".
    That's it.
When you do not see an item "Balloon3D", call up
the menue of the list view. The last four menue items
have check boxes. It is perhaps necessary to uncheck
all these check boxes to see all available packages.

As a general tip, open this page
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/search
and search for "OpenGL" and for "Balloon3D"
You will be given some dead links, but also very
recent information.

There is a small tutorial about Balloon3D, you can
download it from
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2713
When I wrote it a year ago, I thought that I did
a good job, but now I think that improvals are
both possible and necessary. Nevertheless,
the tutorial give you examples to experiment with.
Recently Andreas Raab, the maintainer of 
Balloon3D, included the tutorial into the
downloadable package. When you try to use
Squeak 3.6 and to download Balloon3D, you will
get it anyway.

Balloon3D uses OpenGL drivers. From time to
time users reported problems with Balloon3D. It
always turned out that these prblems were caused
by wrong or missing drivers. Seemingly the OpenGL
drivers are really a problem. I experienced
problems myself a year ago and I had to download
and to install newer drivers for Windows 98.

A very good source for information about openGL is

http://www.opengl.org/users/index.html

The download page is
http://www.opengl.org/users/downloads/index.html
A year ago installation of drivers from this site was a
two-step process. This is credibly still true.
First you download an installation program.
That you start that program and it downloads drivers
that are suitable for your computer. Note that this
downloaded installation program needs internet
access to do its job.

Is this information helpful? If it is not, please do
not hesitate to post more specific questions. I will
try to find answers.

Greetings, Boris