Thread: What does SDL and GLUT mean

  1. #1
    Registered User
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    What does SDL and GLUT mean

    I m sorry for asking this dumb question but i am often hearing SDL and GLUT... What do these two acronyms stand for and what do they do?

  2. #2
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    I came up with a cool phrase to put down here, but i forgot it...

  3. #3
    SDL stands for "Simple DirectMedia Layer" and is essentially an API to access hardware such as your sound card, networking, and graphics.

    GLUT stands for "OpenGL Utility Toolkit". It is like a gift from whatever deity you worship. It simplifies the working with the window manager to do things like opening windows. Best of all, it's platform independent, so you could write a OpenGL app using GLUT for Windows, and use it on Linux, or some other OS without a single line of code changed.

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    What is diff between OpenGL and GLUT?

  5. #5
    Registered User Noose's Avatar
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    OpenGL is a graphics API, it requires a window to display itself in, GLUT is OpenGL wraped into a little toolkit to help make using OpenGL quicker. It can handle input to quickly get an app going, window creation, and some other useful stuff. Basically it makes getting OpenGL up and running faster, but is not recommended for making full blown professional games. Although its very handy for making little games like tetris clones and games like that.

  6. #6
    The capabilities of GLUT are kinda limited on certain things, like input is pretty basic right now. It keeps getting better though.

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