SGI invented OpenGL and offered it first on their IRIX platform. SGI's MIPSpro compiler has the "char" datatype as unsigned by default, so the compiler would likely complain if assigning a GLbyte pointer to an [unsigned] character pointer. Thus, to do something like<div>
<br></div><div>char* ext = glGetString(GL_VENDOR);</div><div><br></div><div>doesn't require a cast on IRIX, while the same code would require a cast using other compilers due to the aforementioned problem.</div><div><br>
</div><div>Patrick</div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Allen Akin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:akin@arden.org">akin@arden.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 12:20:54PM -0600, tom fogal wrote:<br>
| glGetString and gluErrorString, plus maybe some other functions, return<br>
</div>| GLubyte pointers instead of simply character pointers...<br>
<div class="im">| What's the rationale here?<br>
<br>
</div>I agree, it's odd. I don't remember the rationale, but my best guess is<br>
that it papered over some compatibility issue with another language<br>
binding (probably Fortran). I suppose there's a very slight possibility<br>
that it sprang from a compatibility issue with Cray.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Allen<br>
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