geomview RS6000 port

[munzner]

[Just resending this to software to get it in the log...]

In short: your suspicion is not accurate. It's not just the compiler:
it's the GL font manager (used by the interface) which hasn't yet been
ported to the RS/6000.

(The compiler we use to compile geomview on the Iris is cc, but we do 
have a version that compiles on the Nexts with gcc.)

Here's a few more detailed replies already sent out to a previous
asker of this question:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

>hi, i would really like to try out geomview but currently
>we have only RS/6000 available. do you have plans to port
>geomview to other platforms? does it need anything else besides
>gl to run? many thanks.


Geomview uses Mark Overmars' FORMS library, which in turn uses the
SGI font manager library  (fmsetfont(), fmscalefont(), fmprstr(), etc.).
The last I'd heard of RS/6000 GL, it didn't have anything like this,
but that was a while ago; does it now?  Aside from that, there's a fair
chance it could be ported without too much difficulty.

Barring a usable font manager, it might be possible to have a
stripped-down version of geomview with graphics windows but no FORMS
control panels.  For anything more ambitious, you might have to do the work
yourself.  Are any of these possibilities appealing?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
And another:

> 
> Hi,
>    I have not yet attempted to use the FORMS library on the IBM, the font manager
> is the prob. Think I can get that ironed out soon enough. 
>    The font manager seems to be the sticking point for many other programs so
> it seems to be a good idea for a port. Is making the stripped down version a 
> difficult task ?. Alternately I would be happy to add the panels etc using Motif.
> I had worked on a fontmanager like thingy sone months back, can dust it off. I
> would however prefer adding motif support, which is now available both on the
> SGI and IBM RS6000.
> 
> 	Seems a worthwhile task to me ! I'd be willing to spend some time on it..



Yes, that definitely sounds interesting.  If you have even a partial
fontmanager clone, that might be enough to get FORMS working.
It may be the least-effort way to go.

FORMS 2.0 calls the following fm routines:
        fminit()
        fmfindfont(char *name)
        fmgetfontinfo(fmfonthandle fnt, fmfontinfo *info)
        fmgetstrwidth(fmfonthandle fnt, char *str)
        fmprstr()
        fmscalefont(fmfontinfo *font, double v)
        fmsetfont(fmfontinfo *font)

A Motif interface for geomview would be really nice; it's very much
in flux right now though, so putting a lot of work into duplicating the
current set of panels might not be worthwhile.