About the X11 beta version of Geomview
======================================

The source code for X11 Geomview is known to compile and execute on the
following platforms:

  SGI (IRIX 4.0.5)
  Sun 4 (SunOS 4.1.2 with X11R4 and Motif 1.1).
  HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x.

It is also likely that it will compile on other systems such as:

  DECstation 5000-200 (Ultrix).
  DEC Alpha (OSF/1).
  Dell SVR4
  Sun Solaris 2.x
  SCO Open Desktop
  and others...

Some problems you might encounter on Suns:

If you do not normally run Motif on your system (e.g., if you run Sun
OpenWindows instead), then you may get a whole bunch of run-time
errors about translations when you start Geomview.

Usually, you can work around this by copying the file XKeysymDB (included
in this directory) into /usr/lib/X11/ or by appending it's contents to
the file already there. However, the XKeysymDB file may exist at some
alternate location on the file system, depending on your X configuration.



THE FOLLOWING ARE KNOWN BUGS THAT NEED TO BE FIXED FOR THE X11 VERSION.
=======================================================================

INTERFACE
---------

Color panel does not let you type in RGB values like the SGI version of the
program.  You can only change color values using the sliders.

Material panel doesn't show numerical values of parameters being modified.

Key shortcuts are not always listed clearly or at all on the panels.

There is no help panel.

Cut, Copy and Paste on the "Edit" menu don't do anything although Delete
does work (used for deleting the current target).

When all windows are hidden by the user, Geomview continues to run instead of
exiting.

Command line arguments for initial UI window positions are ignored as well as
any commands for repositioning windows.

User can't select an object by double clicking on it with the right mouse
button (picking).

Save and Load Panels only close when you click on the cancel buttons. Cancel
buttons should be changed to "hide" buttons.

GRAPHICS
--------

Rendering is only done in interactive/medium quality mode. There is no high
quality rendering mode, and thus there is no smooth gouraud shading or
transparency like the SGI version.

Geomview uses the shared colormap rather than a private colormap. The result
is that it sometimes cannot allocate the colors it wants which makes scene
renderings look strange. Usually you can work around this by killing off
other colormap hungry applications before starting geomview.

Renderer doesn't do dithering yet. Thus Geomview renderings look especially
poor on black & white displays, not to mention 8 bit displays.

Geomview does not yet take advantage of 24 bit color if it is available to
the X server.

Renderer only does Z depth sorting for hidden surface removal. It does not do
x y z extent checking or polygonal subdivision. Thus renderings often are
incorrect. This is high on the priority list to be fixed.

Clipping is done in a clumsy way. Basically, if any point in a polygon is
behind the camera, then that polygon is not drawn. There is no far clipping
plane yet.

Because of the clipping feature you often cannot see one or more lights when
you are in light editing mode. This is because light lines extend off to
infinity in the direction the light is coming from (which is often behind the
clipping plane).


Bug Reports and Comments
------------------------

Please send bug reports and comments to software@geom.umn.edu.
