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Programming Tools
Januaray 2002
The software developers at Systems in Motion (SIM) first started modelling their
Coin3D 3D graphics API off of
SGI's Open Inventor in 1995.
Since then much progress has been made on building a compatible library, in
addition to adding cross-platform support. They currently offer
a version of Open Inventor for Unix, Windows, and MacOS X. This
cross-platform support has also inspired them to assemble windowing API's for
the various platforms. Currently available are SoXt (Unix), SoQt (Unix,
Windows, MacOS X), SoWin (Windows), and SoGtk (Unix, Windows)
with others on the way. This is very encouraging to Open Inventor
developers, because now applications can actually be used by non-SGI
users. However, this is easier said then done. The tricky part is setting
up a configuration script to generate separate Makefiles depending on the
system.
In an effort to simplify this process and hopefully encourage others to
program with portability in mind, I have written a few pages explaining how to use autoconf and automake with an Open
Inventor application. In addition, I have provided a few examples and
other tidbits to make the
programming easier.
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