Re: Clunky API
Re: Clunky API
- Subject: Re: Clunky API
- From: Peter Ammon <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 10:28:42 -0400
On Thursday, September 20, 2001, at 08:42 AM, Rob Rix wrote:
Greetings,
In a framework I've been developing, I have a vector class. This class
is used for a variety of things throughout the framework, one of them
being OpenGL.
My vector class has the normal cartesian accessor methods: -x, -setX:,
et cetera. Problem is, using these feels sort of clunky, for a couple
of reasons:
1) when using OpenGL's glVertex3d (I may change to floats, it depends
on my final requirements), I have to use [vector x], [vector y],
[vector z]. Typing that out is a bit of a pain. To rectify this, I've
been considering writing a wrapper function which takes a vector and
just calling it instead.
2) for one call of glVertex3D, three message calls are sent. There are
a couple of instances where I can cache these values to improve
performance,
but not many.
Now, I'm not writing this for use in games or anything, so I don't need
ultra-super-duper-mega-performance or anything like that. But three
message calls for every drawn vertex, when there are potentially quite
a large number of vertices drawn, is quite a lot.
So, what I'm wondering is the following:
1) can anybody think of a more elegant solution to this than the
standard messaging? I've been considering reducing my vector class to a
struct and a bunch of functions, but this is _not_ a very nice solution
for me, as it removes all the object-oriented gains I get, and reduces
its ability to integrate with the rest of my framework.
2) would this be considered an acceptable case to use the @public
directive so that you could use vector.x, et cetera, and avoid both the
messaging and a wee bit of the clunkiness? It's not elegant, certainly,
but would it be generally considered apropos?
Thanks for any help in my conundrum,
- -- Rob
Why not use the vector form of the glVertex calls?
In your Vector class, create a method like
- (double*)vertexArray {
static double vertices[3];
vertices[0]=myXCoordinate;
vertices[1]=myYCoordinate;
vertices[2]=myZCoordinate;
return vertices;
}
Then you can call it like glVertex3dv([vector vertices]);
(Alternatively, just store the vertices as an array in your Vector
object and return that array.)
-Peter
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