Re: [Caml-list] OCamlSDL

[Oliver Bandel <oliver@first.in-berlin.de>]

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Warp wrote:

> > The goal of OCamlSDL is to provide access the multimedia hardware
> > in the ML programming language with the help of the SDL library.
> > The Simple DirectMedia Layer is a generic API that provides low
> > level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, and display framebuffer across
> > multiple platforms.
> 
> Félicitations !
> ( The logo is quite cool :o)
> 
> I'm currently working at using OCaml as a script top-level for Direct3D. For
> now it works just fine, and this summer our team will work on a big game
> project almost entirely written in OCaml. Altough "game" things are perhaps
> not the kind of projects for which OCaml was actually designed, I think we
> can get some big payoff by using such a nice langage.

My next project (I think it will take some months; if it takes
3 years, that is ok) will be
a program for using the computer for labannotation (dance-
notation) and have a 3D-animation of dancers.
It's not necessary to have detailed faces and such
human details, but it should be good enough to see the
movements of peoples. And I think about parallell animation
of many dancers.

And the language I choosed to use to realize that program
is Ocaml.

The reason is, that it's possible to have functional, imperative
and OO-features and the high-level language features.
For example IMHO the datatypes (especially the Sum-types)
are a very powerful facility. Why to write parsers in low-level-
languages, when Ocaml provides high-level features?

My first little experiments with OCaml's Graphics-Library
on X11 were very astouning.
That easy handling of graphics I have looked for a very long time.

Maybe the program will be written directly in Ocaml, or
I implement a Domain Specific Language, writing it
in Ocaml.

I'm a beginner in Ocaml, but even these first steps
are very exciting. And I think I have not seen all the
features of that language in detail.

If it is possible to use 3D-Libraries (realtime 3D :)) from
Ocaml directly, I'm interested in any informations.

I have not worked intensively in the graphics-area, but
I'm very interested in it. I don't know OpenGL in detail;
I once read an article about Mesa (OpenGL-clnoe under Linux)
and it's C-API. But as i saw, how complicated it is
(annoying C-programming), I decided not to use it.

If there is an Ocaml-API, that would be *very* nice. :)

So, please if you have more informations on 3D-animations in generall
(I need a postscript-output of 3D too and therefore
have to implement some graphics-stuff by myself (PostScript
does only provide 2D, like Xlib)) 
or especially in using OCaml for 3D-graphic-applications,
let me know.

Ciao,
   Oliver

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