docs/intro.html

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   3 <TITLE>Mesa Introduction</TITLE>
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   7 <H1>Introduction</H1>
   8
   9 <p>
  10 Mesa is a 3-D graphics library with an API which is very similar to
  11 that of <a href="http://www.opengl.org/" target="_parent">OpenGL</a>.*
  12 To the extent that Mesa utilizes the OpenGL command syntax or state
  13 machine, it is being used with authorization from <a
  14 href="http://www.sgi.com/" target="_parent">Silicon Graphics,
  15 Inc.</a>(SGI). However, the author does not possess an OpenGL license
  16 from SGI, and makes no claim that Mesa is in any way a compatible
  17 replacement for OpenGL or associated with SGI. Those who want a
  18 licensed implementation of OpenGL should contact a licensed
  19 vendor.
  20 </p>
  21
  22 <p>
  23 Please do not refer to the library as <em>MesaGL</em> (for legal
  24 reasons). It's just <em>Mesa</em> or <em>The Mesa 3-D graphics
  25 library</em>. <br>
  26 </p>
  27
  28 <p>
  29 * OpenGL is a trademark of <a href="http://www.sgi.com/"
  30 target="_parent">Silicon Graphics Incorporated</a>.
  31 </p>
  32
  33
  34 <H1>Project History</H1>
  35
  36 <p>
  37 The Mesa project was founded by me, Brian Paul.  Here's a short history
  38 of the project.
  39 </p>
  40
  41 <p>
  42 August, 1993: I begin working on Mesa in my spare time.  The project
  43 has no name at that point.  I was simply interested in writing a simple
  44 3D graphics library that used the then-new OpenGL API.  I was partially
  45 inspired by the <em>VOGL</em> library which emulated a subset of IRIS GL.
  46 I had been programming with IRIS GL since 1991.
  47 </p>
  48
  49 <p>
  50 November 1994: I contact SGI to ask permission to distribute my OpenGL-like
  51 graphics library on the internet.  SGI was generally receptive to the
  52 idea and after negotiations with SGI's legal department, I get permission
  53 to release it.
  54 </p>
  55
  56 <p>
  57 February 1995: Mesa 1.0 is released on the internet.  I expected that
  58 a few people would be interested in it, but not thousands.
  59 I was soon receiving patches, new features and thank-you notes on a
  60 daily basis.  That encouraged me to continue working on Mesa.  The
  61 name Mesa just popped into my head one day.  SGI had asked me not to use
  62 the terms <em>"Open"</em> or <em>"GL"</em> in the project name and I didn't
  63 want to make up a new acronym.  Later, I heard of the Mesa programming
  64 language and the Mesa spreadsheet for NeXTStep.
  65 </p>
  66
  67 <p>
  68 In the early days, OpenGL wasn't available on too many systems.
  69 It even took a while for SGI to support it across their product line.
  70 Mesa filled a big hole during that time.
  71 For a lot of people, Mesa was their first introduction to OpenGL.
  72 I think SGI recognized that Mesa actually helped to promote
  73 the OpenGL API, so they didn't feel threatened by the project.
  74 </p>
  75
  76
  77 <p>
  78 1995-1996: I continue working on Mesa both during my spare time and during
  79 my work hours at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University
  80 of Wisconsin in Madison.  My supervisor, Bill Hibbard, lets me do this because
  81 Mesa is now being using for the <a href="http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/%7Ebillh/vis.html" target="_parent">Vis5D</a> project.
  82 </p><p>
  83 October 1996: Mesa 2.0 is released.  It implementes the OpenGL 1.1 specification.
  84 </p>
  85
  86 <p>
  87 March 1997: Mesa 2.2 is released.  It supports the new 3dfx Voodoo graphics
  88 card via the Glide library.  It's the first really popular hardware OpenGL
  89 implementation for Linux.
  90 </p>
  91
  92 <p>
  93 September 1998: Mesa 3.0 is released.  It's the first publicly-available
  94 implementation of the OpenGL 1.2 API.
  95 </p>
  96
  97 <p>
  98 March 1999: I attend my first OpenGL ARB meeting.  I contribute to the
  99 development of several official OpenGL extensions over the years.
 100 </p>
 101
 102 <p>
 103 September 1999: I'm hired by Precision Insight, Inc.  Mesa is a key
 104 component of 3D hardware acceleration in the new DRI project for XFree86.
 105 Drivers for 3dfx, 3dLabs, Intel, Matrox and ATI hardware soon follow.
 106 </p>
 107
 108 <p>
 109 October 2001: Mesa 4.0 is released.
 110 It implements the OpenGL 1.3 specification.
 111 </p>
 112
 113
 114 <p>
 115 November 2001: I cofound <a href="http://www.tungstengraphics.com" target="_parent">
 116 Tungsten Graphics, Inc.</a> with Keith Whitwell, Jens Owen, David Dawes and
 117 Frank LaMonica.
 118 I continue to develop Mesa as part of my resposibilities with Tungsten
 119 Graphics and as a spare-time project.
 120 </p>
 121
 122 <p>
 123 November 2002: Mesa 5.0 is released.
 124 It implements the OpenGL 1.4 specification.
 125 </p>
 126
 127 <p>
 128 January 2003: Mesa 6.0 is released.  It implements the OpenGL 1.5
 129 specification as well as the GL_ARB_vertex_program and
 130 GL_ARB_fragment_program extensions.
 131 </p>
 132
 133
 134 <p>
 135 Ongoing: Mesa is used as the core of many hardware OpenGL drivers for XFree86
 136 within the
 137 <A href="http://dri.sourceforge.net/" target="_parent">DRI project</A>.
 138 I continue to enhance Mesa with new extensions and features.
 139 </p>
 140
 141
 142
 143 <H1>Major Versions</H1>
 144
 145 <p>
 146 This is a summary of the major versions of Mesa.  Note that Mesa's major
 147 version number tracks OpenGL's minor version number.
 148 </p>
 149
 150
 151 <H2>Version 6.x features</H2>
 152 <p>
 153 Version 6.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL 1.5 API with the following
 154 extensions incorporated as standard features:
 155 </p>
 156 <ul>
 157 <li>GL_ARB_occlusion_query
 158 <li>GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
 159 <li>GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
 160 </ul>
 161 <p>
 162 Also note that several OpenGL tokens were renamed in OpenGL 1.5
 163 for the sake of consistency.  The old names will still be valid.
 164 </p>
 165 <pre>
 166 New Name                    Old Name
 167 ------------------------------------------------------------
 168 GL_FOG_COORD_SRC            GL_FOG_COORDINATE_SOURCE
 169 GL_FOG_COORD                GL_FOG_COORDINATE
 170 GL_CURRENT_FOG_COORD        GL_CURRENT_FOG_COORDINATE
 171 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY_TYPE     GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY_TYPE
 172 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY_STRIDE   GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY_STRIDE
 173 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY_POINTER  GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY_POINTER
 174 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY          GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY
 175 GL_SRC0_RGB                 GL_SOURCE0_RGB
 176 GL_SRC1_RGB                 GL_SOURCE1_RGB
 177 GL_SRC2_RGB                 GL_SOURCE2_RGB
 178 GL_SRC0_ALPHA               GL_SOURCE0_ALPHA
 179 GL_SRC1_ALPHA               GL_SOURCE1_ALPHA
 180 GL_SRC2_ALPHA               GL_SOURCE2_ALPHA
 181 </pre>
 182 <p>
 183 See the
 184 <a href="http://www.opengl.org/documentation/spec.html" target="_parent">
 185 OpenGL specification</a> for more details.
 186 </p>
 187
 188
 189
 190 <H2>Version 5.x features</H2>
 191 <p>
 192 Version 5.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL 1.4 API with the following
 193 extensions incorporated as standard features:
 194 </p>
 195 <ul>
 196 <li>GL_ARB_depth_texture
 197 <li>GL_ARB_shadow
 198 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar
 199 <li>GL_ARB_texture_mirror_repeat
 200 <li>GL_ARB_window_pos
 201 <li>GL_EXT_blend_color
 202 <li>GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
 203 <li>GL_EXT_blend_logic_op
 204 <li>GL_EXT_blend_minmax
 205 <li>GL_EXT_blend_subtract
 206 <li>GL_EXT_fog_coord
 207 <li>GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
 208 <li>GL_EXT_point_parameters
 209 <li>GL_EXT_secondary_color
 210 <li>GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
 211 <li>GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias (plus, a per-texture LOD bias parameter)
 212 <li>GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
 213 </ul>
 214
 215
 216 <H2>Version 4.x features</H2>
 217
 218 <p>
 219 Version 4.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL 1.3 API with the following
 220 extensions incorporated as standard features:
 221 </p>
 222
 223 <ul>
 224 <li>GL_ARB_multisample
 225 <li>GL_ARB_multitexture
 226 <li>GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
 227 <li>GL_ARB_texture_compression
 228 <li>GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
 229 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_add
 230 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
 231 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
 232 <li>GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
 233 </ul>
 234
 235 <H2>Version 3.x features</H2>
 236
 237 <p>
 238 Version 3.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL 1.2 API with the following
 239 features:
 240 </p>
 241 <ul>
 242 <li>BGR, BGRA and packed pixel formats
 243 <li>New texture border clamp mode
 244 <li>glDrawRangeElements()
 245 <li>standard 3-D texturing
 246 <li>advanced MIPMAP control
 247 <li>separate specular color interpolation
 248 </ul>
 249
 250
 251 <H2>Version 2.x features</H2>
 252 <p>
 253 Version 2.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL 1.1 API with the following
 254 features.
 255 </p>
 256 <ul>
 257 <li>Texture mapping:
 258         <ul>
 259         <li>glAreTexturesResident
 260         <li>glBindTexture
 261         <li>glCopyTexImage1D
 262         <li>glCopyTexImage2D
 263         <li>glCopyTexSubImage1D
 264         <li>glCopyTexSubImage2D
 265         <li>glDeleteTextures
 266         <li>glGenTextures
 267         <li>glIsTexture
 268         <li>glPrioritizeTextures
 269         <li>glTexSubImage1D
 270         <li>glTexSubImage2D
 271         </ul>
 272 <li>Vertex Arrays:
 273         <ul>
 274         <li>glArrayElement
 275         <li>glColorPointer
 276         <li>glDrawElements
 277         <li>glEdgeFlagPointer
 278         <li>glIndexPointer
 279         <li>glInterleavedArrays
 280         <li>glNormalPointer
 281         <li>glTexCoordPointer
 282         <li>glVertexPointer
 283         </ul>
 284 <li>Client state management:
 285         <ul>
 286         <li>glDisableClientState
 287         <li>glEnableClientState
 288         <li>glPopClientAttrib
 289         <li>glPushClientAttrib
 290         </ul>
 291 <li>Misc:
 292         <ul>
 293         <li>glGetPointer
 294         <li>glIndexub
 295         <li>glIndexubv
 296         <li>glPolygonOffset
 297         </ul>
 298 </ul>
 299
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