Ruby for 3D graphics?

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Ok, I'm sick to death of C++. I'm moving on to a higher level language of
some kind. But, my lower level 3D graphics problems are not going to go
away. Why is Ruby exciting to a 3D graphics optimization jock? And bear in
mind, I expect realism about performance issues, not pie in the sky optimism
about how "performance doesn't matter" or "it's always easier to prototype
in our language" like the Python crowd gives me. Some problems are lower
level than others and I want to know what Ruby has to say about lower level
problems.

--
Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.

 

[Wesley J Landaker]

--Boundary-02=_BXDQ/RlaO9QQqzx
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Description: signed data
Content-Disposition: inline

Ok, I'm sick to death of C++. I'm moving on to a higher level
language of some kind. But, my lower level 3D graphics problems are
not going to go away. Why is Ruby exciting to a 3D graphics
optimization jock? And bear in mind, I expect realism about
performance issues, not pie in the sky optimism about how
"performance doesn't matter" or "it's always easier to prototype in
our language" like the Python crowd gives me. Some problems are
lower level than others and I want to know what Ruby has to say about
lower level problems.

Here is some anecdotal evidence that may just be me remembering things=20
funny.

I did a little experimenting with Ruby/SDL bindings a while back (gosh,=20
I think it was actually more than a year ago), while I was trying to=20
figure out if it was feasible to write [essentially a game] in Ruby=20
instead of C++. My experience was that it didn't work very well to try=20
to do the whole app (with event loop et al) in Ruby, especially when I=20
needed things to be multithreaded. The worst place I'd see problems is=20
trying to synchronize graphics and sound. But what *did* work fairly=20
well was to have a C++ event loop and have Ruby embedded to handle the=20
game logic itself (while running Ruby in its own native thread).

The opposite approach to this problem, which I didn't attempt, would be=20
to write the whole thing in Ruby, but use C++ extentions to do the=20
parts that were the most critical. The downside of this seems to be=20
that you can't(?) use native threads. Ruby threads are good enough for=20
me 99.9% of the time, but they didn't seem to work good enough back=20
when I tried this.

Then again, 1) I might have been doing something wrong, 2) I didn't try=20
*that* hard to optimize it in Ruby, and 3) the project I was working on=20
eventually diverged into something a little different, and I never got=20
to the point where I needed the SDL part of the software. =3D)

=2D-=20
Wesley J. Landaker - (e-mail address removed)
OpenPGP FP: 4135 2A3B 4726 ACC5 9094 0097 F0A9 8A4C 4CD6 E3D2


--Boundary-02=_BXDQ/RlaO9QQqzx
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Description: signature

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQA/QDXB8KmKTEzW49IRAg1WAKCAK6OSGsIr5lQVfFhRhbA0AtRsewCfb0np
ETwpPCSvftIsvAfgMLVYvcE=
=yU/M
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--Boundary-02=_BXDQ/RlaO9QQqzx--

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

[nothing]

Wesley, I saw only a blank where you tried to reply.

--
Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.

 

[Hal E. Fulton]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon J. Van Every" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: Ruby for 3D graphics?

Wesley J Landaker wrote:

[nothing]

Wesley, I saw only a blank where you tried to reply.

He replied, but if you're using Outlook Express,
it would have shown up as a .txt attachment.

This is an interaction between his mail client and
(a bug in) yours and mine.

OT: When I finish migrating to Linux, what's everyone's
favorite client there? Email me if you will.

Hal

 

[Ryan Pavlik]

I'd recommend the Mozilla mail client, as it will be familiar to OE
users and it has an awesome bayesian spam filter built in. Evolution is
the most similar to Microsoft Outlook. KMail is also a pretty good
client, and a bit snappier than the other two I've mentioned.

Of course, hard-core command-line users will tell you MUTT is the only
way to go.

If you like a nice combination of a _fast_ GUI mail client with the
ability to access your mail from the command line, check out Sylpheed:

http://sylpheed.org/

It's very snappy, and uses MH-style folders, so you can use all the NMH
commands from the console.

 

[Rasputin]

I'd recommend the Mozilla mail client, as it will be familiar to OE
users and it has an awesome bayesian spam filter built in. Evolution is
the most similar to Microsoft Outlook. KMail is also a pretty good
client, and a bit snappier than the other two I've mentioned.

Of course, hard-core command-line users will tell you MUTT is the only
way to go.

yup

(Although I just filled up my WLANs /30 with assorted PDAs laptops and servers,
so I think I'm going to bite the bullet and implement IMAP, then I can change
MUAs without breaking too much...)

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

Saluton!

* Ryan Pavlik; 2003-08-19, 21:19 UTC:

If you like a nice combination of a _fast_ GUI mail client with the
ability to access your mail from the command line, check out
Sylpheed:

http://sylpheed.org/

It's very snappy, and uses MH-style folders, so you can use all the
NMH commands from the console.

If I am not using Mutt I use Mew + Emacs

http://www.mew.org/

Gis,

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Dave Brown]

: Of course, hard-core command-line users will tell you MUTT is the only
: way to go.

No way! Mutt isn't hard-core enough for the TRUE hard-core
command-line users. They insist on mh.

--Dave, mh user since 1995

 

[Eric Schwartz]

No way! Mutt isn't hard-core enough for the TRUE hard-core
command-line users. They insist on mh.

mh? Bloody MUAs, always bloating & adding features you don't need.
If you're not using mail(1), you're spending too much time loading
code, and not enough time reading mail.


-=Eric, and using ed(1) to write your code, too!

 

[Mauricio Fernández]

mh? Bloody MUAs, always bloating & adding features you don't need.
If you're not using mail(1), you're spending too much time loading
code, and not enough time reading mail.

tail -f /var/spool/mail/username



--
_ _
| |__ __ _| |_ ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __
| '_ \ / _` | __/ __| '_ ` _ \ / _` | '_ \
| |_) | (_| | |_\__ \ | | | | | (_| | | | |
|_.__/ \__,_|\__|___/_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

'Ooohh.. "FreeBSD is faster over loopback, when compared to Linux
over the wire". Film at 11.'
-- Linus Torvalds

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

Saluton!

* Eric Schwartz; 2003-08-21, 13:52 UTC:

mh? Bloody MUAs, always bloating & adding features you don't need.
If you're not using mail(1), you're spending too much time loading
code, and not enough time reading mail.

Consider upgrading to nail. nail is a drop-in replacement for
(Berkeley) mail that provides MIME support (missing MIME support is
one of the major shortcomings of Berkeley mail). It is available at

http://omnibus.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/~gritter/

This is quick help for mail

Usage: mail [-iIHnv] [-s subject] [-c cc-addr] [-b bcc-addr] to-addr
... [- sendmail-options ...]
mail [-iIHnNv] -f [name]
mail [-iIHnNv] [-u user]

and this is quick help for nail:

Usage: nail [-BFintv~] [-s subject] [-a attachment] [-c cc-addr]
[-b bcc-addr] [-r from-addr] [-h hops] to-addr ...
[- sendmail-options ...]
nail [-BeHiInNv~] [-T name] -f [name]
nail [-BeinNv~] [-u user]

nail is especially usefull for script-controlled sending of e-mails
with attachments. It is considerably faster than mutt for this
purpose.

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

Gis,

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Eric Schwartz]

* Eric Schwartz; 2003-08-21, 13:52 UTC:

Consider upgrading to nail.

Right, next time I'll obviously have to use explicit <sarcasm /> tags.

-=Eric