[Public WebGL] In defense of older hardware

[stephen white]

On 16/01/2010, at 5:51 AM, Patrick Baggett wrote:
> It just isn't within the scope of the WebGL spec to handle any  
> generic piece of hardware that can do perspective correct texture  
> mapping. You're looking for OpenGL 1.1+, which no spec. has been  
> written for the Web. You'll have to be content running native code,  
> or drafting a different GL standard that matches OpenGL 1.1+.


I'm arguing more along the lines that WebGL is going to have to handle  
deprecated APIs anyway, as time moves on and ES 2.0 is replaced with  
ES 3.0 or CL or some future specification.

So if there is a deprecated API section in WebGL that has the absolute  
minimum to enable access to older hardware, then a much greater number  
of users would be able to see why WebGL is something they want to care  
about.

This doesn't amount to a great deal, only a few extra constants to  
allow:

	gl.enable(GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_ARB);

	gl.bindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT, m_texture);

There may even be no obligation to hide the difference between shaders  
and fixed pipelines, and it will be the programmer's problem to handle  
the normalised co-ordinates versus rectangle texture co-ordinates.

As long as the WebGL spec has a "deprecated API" section where the  
extra bits can be found, then the programmer has the option of  
reaching those extra devices, and there's a lot of them because the  
hardware ain't that old.

This Macbook Pro 17" laptop of mine is only 3 years old. The Web is  
all about cross-platform and widest reach. WebGL has to hold its nose  
and just do what it takes to be cross-platform.

--
   ste...@

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