Re: [GtkGLExt] Using COIN-3D with GTK?

[Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 freenet de>]

On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 13:01 +1100, John Pye wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> Can anyone offer any comments on the use of COIN-3D (Open Inventor) with
> GTK and/or GtkGLExt? I am considering using COIN-3D for some graphics
> stuff but most of my GUI programming so far has been with GTK, so if I
> can use COIN-3D along with GTK then I would be able to avoid needing to
> learn Qt.
The short answer is: Inventor and/or Coin + Gtk/GtkGLExt don't go along very well.

The easiest way to getting started probably is to connect Coin and/or
Inventor directly, using an approach similar to old gtkglarea and its
Motif master (libGLw, GlwDrawA/GlwMDrawA widgets) it had been trying to
mimic had done.

There exist several attempts to port and/or clone InventorXt (SGI
original) to Gtk, but to my knowledge non of them has ever reached a
shape deserving to be called "ready to use". SIM's SoGtk had been one of
them.

> Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated. There seem to be some
> out-of-date bindings from COIN-3D to GTK, but all the information seems
> a bit out of date.
Yes, SIM's SoGtk is more or less dead. They stopped active development
several years ago due to "lack of interest", as they said.

I had been contributing to SoGtk at that time, but stopped contributing
at the very point SIM changed Coin's license to GPL/QPL (it had been
LGPL before), to streamline its license with other TrollTech products
(SIM is owned by TrollTech).

Ralf