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Graphics Class Library Documentation

GCL stands for "Graphics Class Library", and is a collection of useful graphics-oriented routines I use in my work.

GCL includes the following:

- Useful geometry and colour utilities. (Geometry.h, Colour.h)

- Standard scene graph functionality for constructing and displaying hierarchical scenes. (SceneLang.h)

- Readers and writers for a number of scene file formats. (SceneReader, SceneWriter.)

- Support for a generic rendering class, Renderer. Current renderers:

• OpenGL output (GLRenderer, GLXPane)
• EPS (wireframe only) output (EPSRenderer).
• Mesa direct-to-pixmap output (MesaRenderer).

- A generic image class, Image, with support for

• Reading and writing ppm, tiff, gif, pic...
• 8-bit grayscale, 32-bit colour, float-based colour.

- A scene viewer class (ScenePane).

- Support for avars, and simple keyframe animation. (Avars.h, Animation.h)

- Support for multiresolution models; both edge-collapse (geometry simplification) and face-cluster (geometry aggregation). (MRModel.h)

- Vector and Matrix utilities. (VecUtil.h, MatUtil.h)

- Simple X windows window handling and image display support. (XGraphicsSystem, XPane, XEventPane)

The default distribution builds the library, as well as a number of command line tools that use that library.

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