Hello Experts,
I am totally new to the whole OpenGl & C++ World, so forgive me for maybe silly questions.
The background is that I have searched the web for days but found nothing out. To me personally: I am an professional programmer in other languages (Delphi, Perl, etc.) and have now to start a big project that should have as a result a good vector library and should be runable on Windows XP/2000, Win CE(.net) and Linux.
Okay, so I’d thought (hu, came never out of the windows environment…) I have to use C++.
Then I’ve searched for a graphic lib to start and I think opengl is the best (I also looked at SDL).
I hope someone could answer these small questions which would help for a start:
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OpenGL can be easily used for a 2D-Drawing application, right? I mean, I don’t need any special hardware like directx which wouldn’t be ideal for 2d vector programming.
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Does OpenGl run on Win XP/00, CE and Linux?
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Can 2D and 3D be combined? (As far as I found out, OpenGL is always 3D, 2D=3D-Z)
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Can OpenGL antialiase my shapes? I saw that lines and points are possible but I need to have all my shapes antialiased, just as the M$ GDI+ Library does.
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How can I draw complex pathes? I have searched for something like a “Path-Element” onto which I can draw different shapes like rect, lines, polys and more… after the path is ready I want to draw and fill it…
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How can transparency easily archivied? For comparison: In GDI+ I simply have a 32bit color with included alpha and when I draw anything with that color on my HDC, it is blended to the rest
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VERY important: Is OpenGL fast? Say I have to render huge, really huge Maps or CAD-Drawings in the fastest time as possible… And also, these things must be additionally animated.
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How can I draw linear and radial gradients?
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How can I paint one or more Bézier Curves?
Okay, these were my most important questions for now, I really hope someone can help me here…
A last thing: Are there any sources or applications (free, commercial, etc.) out there that are a kind of a Vector Application based on OpenGL as I want to do?
And: Is there maybe already any library out that does some of the things with OpenGL I want to do? I searched but found nothing.
1000’s thanks,
Alex