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- About the X11 beta version of Geomview
- ======================================
-
- The source code for X11 Geomview is known to compile and execute on the
- following platforms:
-
- SGI (IRIX 4.0.5)
- Sun 4 (SunOS 4.1.2 with X11R4 and Motif 1.1).
- HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x.
-
- It is also likely that it will compile on other systems such as:
-
- DECstation 5000-200 (Ultrix).
- DEC Alpha (OSF/1).
- Dell SVR4
- Sun Solaris 2.x
- SCO Open Desktop
- and others...
-
- Some problems you might encounter on Suns:
-
- If you do not normally run Motif on your system (e.g., if you run Sun
- OpenWindows instead), then you may get a whole bunch of run-time
- errors about translations when you start Geomview.
-
- Usually, you can work around this by copying the file XKeysymDB (included
- in this directory) into /usr/lib/X11/ or by appending it's contents to
- the file already there. However, the XKeysymDB file may exist at some
- alternate location on the file system, depending on your X configuration.
-
-
-
- THE FOLLOWING ARE KNOWN BUGS THAT NEED TO BE FIXED FOR THE X11 VERSION.
- =======================================================================
-
- INTERFACE
- ---------
-
- Color panel does not let you type in RGB values like the SGI version of the
- program. You can only change color values using the sliders.
-
- Material panel doesn't show numerical values of parameters being modified.
-
- Key shortcuts are not always listed clearly or at all on the panels.
-
- There is no help panel.
-
- Cut, Copy and Paste on the "Edit" menu don't do anything although Delete
- does work (used for deleting the current target).
-
- When all windows are hidden by the user, Geomview continues to run instead of
- exiting.
-
- Command line arguments for initial UI window positions are ignored as well as
- any commands for repositioning windows.
-
- User can't select an object by double clicking on it with the right mouse
- button (picking).
-
- Save and Load Panels only close when you click on the cancel buttons. Cancel
- buttons should be changed to "hide" buttons.
-
- GRAPHICS
- --------
-
- Rendering is only done in interactive/medium quality mode. There is no high
- quality rendering mode, and thus there is no smooth gouraud shading or
- transparency like the SGI version.
-
- Geomview uses the shared colormap rather than a private colormap. The result
- is that it sometimes cannot allocate the colors it wants which makes scene
- renderings look strange. Usually you can work around this by killing off
- other colormap hungry applications before starting geomview.
-
- Renderer doesn't do dithering yet. Thus Geomview renderings look especially
- poor on black & white displays, not to mention 8 bit displays.
-
- Geomview does not yet take advantage of 24 bit color if it is available to
- the X server.
-
- Renderer only does Z depth sorting for hidden surface removal. It does not do
- x y z extent checking or polygonal subdivision. Thus renderings often are
- incorrect. This is high on the priority list to be fixed.
-
- Clipping is done in a clumsy way. Basically, if any point in a polygon is
- behind the camera, then that polygon is not drawn. There is no far clipping
- plane yet.
-
- Because of the clipping feature you often cannot see one or more lights when
- you are in light editing mode. This is because light lines extend off to
- infinity in the direction the light is coming from (which is often behind the
- clipping plane).
-
-
- Bug Reports and Comments
- ------------------------
-
- Please send bug reports and comments to software@geom.umn.edu.
-