To all those interested in user interaction, input, sound, etc, have a look here

OpenGL draws stuff. It can’t help you with those other things, you have to do them yourself. You can get some limited I/O functionality out of glut. You can transform window coordinates into/out of object coordinates with gluProject and gluUnproject. But that’s it.

Consider everything related to gui design, sound, joysticks, basic C/C++ programming, whatever, off topic for these forums.

It’s not pretty that these forums get swamped by stuff that’s completely unrelated to OpenGL. There are forums at flipcode.com, gamedev.net, cprogramming.com and other places where you’ll get better replies.

If that sounded like I’m mean, that’s just fine with me. Had to get that point across.

Sorry Zeck. But with OpenGL topics branching off into GLUT and OpenAL and all those other stuff its no longer strictly limited to just the graphics. A GLUT keyboard question is a legitimate question for example. When you start getting into GLUT game mode (never used it, just heard about it), it just begs for game programmers to try their questions here.

Also remember that a majority of posts are made by people doing games and demos not just graphics. So its very likely that non graphical questions will “leak” into the posts. Then, of course, there are the newbies who can’t distinguish between OpenGL and anything else.

I find it helpful when people point out off topic posts to those who make them. After a while of seeing them you tend to get a good feel for what should and should not be posted.

I am just an OpenGL beginner, but i think that Zeck is right. And the GLUT concerning questions should be asked in the Toolkits forum. Since i am using linux i am ignoring all posts dealing with M$ win specific stuff. I do not like C/C++ either so i can ignore all these endless-code-post, too. I thought by reading this board i could improve my OpenGL knowledge and help some people on their way. I did a good work of research before actually doing my first coding (lots of new bookmarks ). Since opengl.org is not a good place for information on linear algebra, 3D graphics theorie and kernel configuration (you won’t believe i really found better places for all of the three mentioned topics), i put it in a bookmarkfolder labeled OpenGL, but now i am not sure if it was right to do this?
I know that you can’t always clearly say if a special post is ‘pure’ OpenGL related or not, but a little less off topic posts would be more helpful to people like me who only want opengl and not all this other stuff (there are really enough places on the net where you can get that information).
Just a beginner opinion.

and btw i don’t like GLUT

[This message has been edited by satan (edited 03-17-2002).]

I do want less Off Topic posts too. But the hard fact is, most newbies can’t distinguish between OpenGL and other topics. New programmers don’t really understand GLUT, etc are toolkits, so they come here first.

So the best way to deal with that now is to “educate” them by pointing out what is off topic and what’s not and direct them where to go.