[Savannah-register-public] [task #9144] Submission of Reindeer

[Patrik Olsson]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?9144>

                 Summary: Submission of Reindeer
                 Project: Savannah Administration
            Submitted by: peo
            Submitted on: Tue 24 Feb 2009 01:49:27 PM CET
         Should Start On: Tue 24 Feb 2009 12:00:00 AM CET
   Should be Finished on: Fri 06 Mar 2009 12:00:00 AM CET
                Category: Project Approval
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 0%
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

    _______________________________________________________

Details:

A new project has been registered at Savannah 
This project account will remain inactive until a site admin approves or
discards the registration.


= Registration Administration =

While this item will be useful to track the registration process, *approving
or discarding the registration must be done using the specific Group
Administration
<https://savannah.gnu.org/siteadmin/groupedit.php?group_id=10163> page*,
accessible only to site administrators, effectively *logged as site
administrators* (superuser):

* Group Administration
<https://savannah.gnu.org/siteadmin/groupedit.php?group_id=10163>


= Registration Details =

* Name: *Reindeer*
* System Name:  *reindeer*
* Type: non-GNU software & documentation
* License: GNU General Public License v3 or later

----

==== Description: ====
Abstracts the rendering of three-dimensional virtual scenes. This library
written in C has a simple API very similar to OpenGL but with some
modifications to make dynamic implementation simpler and more efficient. The
library itself does very little, and instead loads backends dynamically that
does most of the work by using other APIs. Currently there is an OpenGL
backend. Planned backends are a raytracer and Direct3D.

Not only is it possible to load a backend on startup. It is also possible to
reload another backend later, and even load many different backends at the
same time. It is also possible to make several contexts for each backend.
Vertexarrays, textures, shaders and so on are defined globally and thus can be
used by all contexts, even in different backends.

The main goal is to let the user choose in which way a scene should be
rendered, depending on the hardware and installed backends. But Reindeer can
also be used to get portable graphics output for a program. Reindeer is not a
3D engine or a game engine, but it can be used to implement them.


==== Other Software Required: ====
Included:
    libtool/ltdl - http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/ - LGPL
Indirect through OpenGL:
    MesaGL - http://www.mesa3d.org/ - "MIT License"
(http://www.mesa3d.org/license.html)
    Various other free and non-free implementations of OpenGL


==== Other Comments: ====
It's hard to tell what libraries will be used when using an API like OpenGL.
The implementation could be free or non-free. And the features could sometimes
be more and sometimes less even for the same library. Thus at one point a free
dependency could give more features over a non-free dependency, but the other
way could be true as well. It all depends on hardware and which implementation
the user chose to install.

Another grey area is Direct3D. I want to accept Direct3D backends (I don't
however plan to write them myself), but it's not exactly an easy choice. While
there are free implementations of Direct3D (e.g. Wine) in practice it's almost
only non-free implementations that would be used (i.e. MS Windows drivers).
Currently, Direct3D drivers for MS Windows often also have more features than
a free OpenGL-implementation (e.g. Mesa) for the same hardware, but for some
hardware the support on a free system is equal or better (e.g. Intel cards,
and soon AMD/ATI cards). I don't think it will increase usage of non-free
software, but I do think it will be useful to people that want to port a game
to Windows (where OpenGL support is poor, and Direct3D is the only way to get
realtime graphics on common hardware). I can only see that rejecting Direct3D
support will hurt users, if anyone, but hardly the developers of the non-free
software. I think you'll agree but I still think it's best to ask if you will
allow such backend to be hosted on Savannah.


==== Tarball URL: ====
http://savannah.gnu.org/submissions_uploads/reindeer-0.0.1.tar.gz






    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?9144>

_______________________________________________
  Message sent via/by Savannah
  http://savannah.gnu.org/