Geomview/OOGL Release 1.5
The Geometry Center
Oct 21, 1994
------------
CONTENTS
--------
Introduction
Installation
More about Geomview
External Modules
Auxiliary Programs
Documentation
Geomview E-mail
History
Miscellaneous
Known Bugs
Improvements/Wish list
Bug Reports and Comments
INTRODUCTION
------------
This is version 1.5 of Geomview/OOGL. It runs on Silicon
Graphics workstations, on NeXT computers under NeXTStep 3.0 or
later, on HP workstations running NextStep/HP 3.2, on
NextStep/Intel under NeXTStep 3.1 and later, and now includes a
generic X version which runs on (at least) Alphas, Suns, HP-UX,
and Linux.
Geomview is an interactive geometry viewing program. OOGL, which
stands for Object Oriented Graphics Library, is the library upon
which Geomview is built.
NOTE: Please read the file REGISTER. We need to know how our
users are using Geomview so that we can better serve you.
In addition, if you use geomview please send an email note to
geomview-users-request@geom.umn.edu requesting to be added to the
geomview-users mailing list; this list is for announcements
regarding geomview and for geomview users to communicate with
each other. See the details in the GEOMVIEW E-MAIL section
below.
INSTALLATION
------------
See the INSTALL file for installation details. Disk space required:
geomview-alpha.x11.tar.Z, untarred 8 MB
geomview-hp.x11.tar.Z, untarred 7 MB
geomview-linux.x11.tar.Z, untarred 8 MB
geomview-next.tar, installed 19 MB
geomview-sgi.tar.Z, untarred 17 MB
geomview-sun4.x11.tar.Z, untarred 11 MB
geomview-src.tar.Z
source only, untarred 14 MB
source, compiled for SGI only 86 MB
source, compiled for Sun only 50 MB
source, compiled for Next (triple fat) only 142 MB
Editing makefiles/Makedefs.global to set COPTS = -O
rather than the default COPTS = -g yields:
source, compiled for SGI only, COPTS=-O 47 MB
source, compiled for Sun only, COPTS=-O 27 MB
source, compiled for NeXT, (triple fat), COPTS=-O 62 MB
MORE ABOUT GEOMVIEW
-------------------
Geomview represents the current state of an ongoing effort at the
Geometry Center to provide interactive geometry software which is
particularly appropriate for mathematics research and education.
In particular, geomview can display things in hyperbolic and
spherical space as well as Euclidean space.
Geomview allows multiple independently controllable objects and
cameras. It provides interactive control for motion, appearances
(including lighting, shading, and materials), picking on an
object, edge or vertex level, snapshots in SGI image file or
Renderman RIB format, and adding or deleting objects is provided
through direct mouse manipulation, control panels, and keyboard
shortcuts. External programs can drive desired aspects of the
viewer (such as continually loading changing geometry or
controlling the motion of certain objects) while allowing
interactive control of everything else.
Geomview supports the following simple data types: polyhedra with
shared vertices (.off), quadrilaterals, rectangular meshes,
vectors, and Bezier surface patches of arbitrary degree including
rational patches. Object hierarchies can be constructed with
lists of objects and instances of object(s) transformed by one or
many 4x4 matrices. Arbitrary portions of changing hierarchies
may be transmitted by creating named references.
Geomview can display Mathematica and Maple 3-D graphics output; for
information on this see the files OOGL.m.doc and gvplot.doc, respectively,
in the "doc" subdirectory.
EXTERNAL MODULES
----------------
Geomview comes with several "external modules" --- programs that
communicate with geomview through a command language. The list
of currently installed modules appears in the "Modules" browser
on geomview's main panel. To invoke a module, click the mouse on
the appropriate line in this browser. The modules in this
distribution are:
MODULE PLATFORMS DESCRIPTION
4dview: S 4-dimensional slicing & rotation
animate: SNX flip through a sequence of objects
clipboard: S cut, copy and paste geometric objects
crayola: SN interactively color objects
drawbdy: SNX compute and draw the boundary of an object
flythrough: S interactive version of "Not Knot" hyperbolic flythrough
ginsu: S interactively slice objects
graffiti: SN draw line segments on objects
gvclock: SNX 3D clock, demonstrates real-time motion
hinge: S hinge copies of a polyhedron around its edges
maniview: S 3-manifold viewer
NDview: S N-dimensional viewing controls and demonstration
NDdemo: S N-dimensional viewing demonstration
nose: SNX demonstrates picking
pssnap: SNX generate PostScript snapshot
stereo: S hardware, crosseyed, red/cyan stereo (beta version)
sweep: SN generate objects of rotation from line segments
tackdown: S redefine an object's "home" position
transformer: S explicitly control an object's transformation matrix
trigrp: S explore triangle symmetry groups
warp: SN interactively deform an object
(S means SGI version exists, N means NeXTStep version exists,
X means X version exists)
AUXILIARY PROGRAMS
------------------
PROGRAM PLATFORMS DESCRIPTION
anytooff: SNX convert any OOGL object into OFF format
anytoucd: SNX convert any OOGL object into UCD format
bdy: SNX compute the boundary edges of a geom as a VECT file
clip: SNX clip an OOGL object against planes or other surfaces
geomstuff: SNX pipe your program's OOGL data to geomview via a pipe
math2oogl: SNX convert Mathematica graphics object to OOGL format
medit2gv: SNX convert medit material & lighting files to OOGL format
offconsol: SNX consolidate duplicate vertices in an OFF file
oogl2rib SNX convert OOGL to RenderMan RIB (see OOGL.m.doc)
polymerge: SNX merge vertices, edges, and faces in an OFF file
togeomview: SNX pipe GCL commands or geometry to a copy of geomview,
invoking geomview if necessary
ucdtooff: SNX convert UCD format file into an OFF OOGL file
(S means SGI version exists, N means NeXTStep version exists,
X means X version exists)
DOCUMENTATION
-------------
A comprehensive manual is in the "doc" subdirectory. This manual
was written specifically for the SGI version. Most, but not all
of it, applies to the NeXT and X11 version as well. There is
also a copy of this manual on the World Wide Web at URL:
http://www.geom.umn.edu/docs/software/viz/geomview/geomview_toc.html.
The file doc/oogltour gives an introduction to the OOGL file
format, which is the format of geometry files that geomview
reads. More details are in the manual.
Further documentation is in the "man" directory, which contains
Unix manual pages in both nroff source and formatted form. Each
external module, as well as geomview itself, has a manual
page. Of particular interest are:
man/cat1/geomview.1 geomview man page
man/cat5/geomview.5 geomview command language reference
manual
man/cat5/oogl.5 OOGL file format reference manual
doc/OOGL.m.doc documentation for interface to Mathematica
doc/gvplot.doc documentation for interface to Maple
GEOMVIEW E-MAIL
---------------
There are three electronic mail addresses for communication
regarding geomview:
geomview-users@geom.umn.edu:
This is a mailing list of people using geomview and can be used
for communication between users regarding geomview problems,
questions, experiences, etc. The geomview authors are also a part
of this list and will respond to questions posted to it. We also
use this list to make announcements about new releases and other
things of interest to users. To be added to or removed from the
geomview-users list, send a note to geomview-users-request@geom.umn.edu
software@geom.umn.edu:
This is the "official" support line; it reaches the geomview
authors directly. In general if you have a question or comment
that may be of interest to other users, send it to the
"geomview-users" address. Use "software" for communication
intended just for the authors; in particular, send bug reports and
suggestions for improvement to this address.
register@geom.umn.edu
Use this address to tell us what you are doing with Geomview. The
Geometry Center is funded by the National Science Foundation, and
it is important that we be able to report to NSF the ways in which
our software is being used. If you use Geomview in your work
please send us a note at this address telling us what you are
doing with it. See the file REGISTER for more details. Please do
not send bug reports or questions to this address; use
"software@geom.umn.edu" for that.
HISTORY
-------
This project began in the summer of 1988 with the work of Pat
Hanrahan on a viewing program called MinneView. Shortly
thereafter Charlie Gunn begin developing OOGL in conjunction with
MinneView. In the time since then, many people have contributed,
including Stuart Levy, Mark Meuer, Tamara Munzner, Steve
Anderson, Mario Lopez, Todd Kaplan.
In 1991, OOGL was rewritten and a new viewer geomview was begun.
Both geomview and the new OOGL have a core of device-independent
common code. Currently there are device drivers for SGI GL,
PhotoRealistic RenderMan, Quick RenderMan on the NeXT, and the X
Window System. The NeXT version of geomview was written by
Daniel Krech and Scott Wisdom. Scott Wisdom wrote the Photo
Realistic and Quick RenderMan OOGL drivers. The SGI version of
geomview and OOGL was written by Stuart Levy, Tamara Munzner, and
Mark Phillips. The geomview common kernel was written by Stuart
Levy, Tamara Munzner, and Mark Phillips, with contributions from
Nathaniel Thurston and Celeste Fowler. The X version was created
by Daeron Meyer and Timothy Rowley.
MISCELLANEOUS
-------------
For a list of changes between versions, see the file CHANGES.
Geomview is copyrighted software. Please read the file COPYING
in this directory before using or distributing Geomview.
The file MANIFEST contains a list of the files in this
distribution.
KNOWN BUGS
----------
(S refers to a SGI bug, N refers to a NeXTStep bug, and X refers
to a X bug)
Picking does not work if any part of any object is behind the
camera plane. (SNX)
Command line arguments for initial UI window positions do not
work for the File Load and Save panels. (X)
When an object is partially behind the eyeplane, it
disappears. (X)
IMPROVEMENTS/WISH LIST
----------------------
More modules will be converted to NeXTStep and X, and the way
modules are handled on under NeXTSTEP should improve.
BUG REPORTS AND COMMENTS
------------------------
Please send bug reports and comments about this version to
software@geom.umn.edu.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.