In C# you can use the ILGenerator in System.Reflection.Emit to generate a function call to a pointer retrieved by wglGetProcAddress. So OpenGL Bindings without external DLL’s are possible in all .Net languages.
Of course, I can get some ways to use OGL with .NET languages… but this is not the question… the question is:
why i should do that and not an “official” team?
And all the responses from the official ppl is… ARB cometee is too busy, OGL should remain C portable… nice answer… if you need more ppl, hire then or just support 3rd party products like Tao… or grab some entusiast ppl… and with an official wrapper it will be perfectly portable, but suited well into a specific language… All that you add to a product will be better than add nothing or washing your hands…
Look at Managed DirectX for example… they made an “official wrapper” … or look the OGL integration in Java3D… That’s what I mean…
Perhaps this is not the place to request that, but what i am saying is that it would be nice and that’s my suggestion: “support other languages !=C/C++” … This is NOT incompatible with a “base API in c/c++”… What i am saying is just and simply to include “official” wrappers, support, documentation and updates for it. Another possibility is to change the extension mechanism from wglGetProcAdress to other way, cuz some languages dont support function pointer calls… In fact, we have only troubles calling extensions, all the glVertex, glEnable, etc… can be called without problems using the DllImport platform invoke namespace…
Look what other companies did omg… Look the competency… Listen the !=C/C++ ppl… I think the .NET has a great potential but i have tons of troubles using OGL with it, so perhaps i will be “forced” to use a more-.NET fit solution like MDX, but i loooooooooove OGL… All i am saying is that the FUTURE ogl should take all this languages into consideration, nothing more.
It is a nice opportunity to kick Microsoft where more damage can do… in HIS .NET. Write a nice wrapper and I will forget MDX.
There are formal bindings for Java already underway. JSR 231 is for the full OGL spec, and JSR 239 for OGL-ES.
If you want to run non-formal bindings then the there is the JOGL codebase which is available as one of the java.net projects . Alternatively there is LWJGL, and a couple of other non-formalised bindings running around as well.