OpenGL Programming Guide

Appendix D
The OpenGL Extension to the X Window System

This appendix briefly discusses the routines defined as part of the OpenGL Extension to the X Window System (GLX). These routines are discussed in more detail in the OpenGL Reference Manual. You need to have some knowledge of X to fully understand the following and to use GLX successfully. This appendix has the following major sections:

• "Initialization"
  
  

• "Controlling Rendering"
  
  

• "GLX Prototypes"

In the X Window System, OpenGL rendering is made available as an extension to X in the formal X sense: Connection and authentication are accomplished with the normal X mechanisms. As with other X extensions, there is a defined network protocol for OpenGL's rendering commands encapsulated within the X byte stream. Since performance is critical in three-dimensional rendering, the OpenGL extension to X allows OpenGL to bypass the X server's involvement in data encoding, copying, and interpretation and instead render directly to the graphics pipeline.

Initialization
Controlling Rendering
GLX Prototypes

OpenGL Programming Guide