return a string describing the current GL connection
Signature
Parameters
| Variables | Description |
|---|---|
| name |
Specifies a symbolic constant, one of
GL_VENDOR
,
GL_RENDERER
,
GL_VERSION
,
GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION
, or
GL_EXTENSIONS
.
|
Description
glGetString
returns a pointer to a static string
describing some aspect of the current GL connection.
name
can be one of the following:
- GL_VENDOR
-
Returns the company responsible for this GL implementation. This name does not change from release to release.
- GL_RENDERER
-
Returns the name of the renderer. This name is typically specific to a particular configuration of a hardware platform. It does not change from release to release.
- GL_VERSION
-
Returns a version or release number.
- GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION
-
Returns a version or release number for the shading language.
- GL_EXTENSIONS
-
Returns a space-separated list of supported extensions to GL.
Because the GL does not include queries for the performance
characteristics of an implementation, some applications are written to
recognize known platforms and modify their GL usage based on known
performance characteristics of these platforms.
Strings
GL_VENDOR
and
GL_RENDERER
together uniquely specify
a platform. They do not change from release to release and should be used
by platform-recognition algorithms.
Some applications want to make use of features that
are not part of the standard GL. These features
may be implemented as extensions to the standard GL.
The
GL_EXTENSIONS
string is a space-separated
list of supported GL extensions.
(Extension names never contain a space character.)
The
GL_VERSION
and
GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION
strings begin with a version number.
The version number uses one
of these forms:
major_number.minor_number
major_number.minor_number.release_number
Vendor-specific information may follow the version
number. Its format depends on the implementation, but
a space always separates the version number and
the vendor-specific information.
All strings are null-terminated.
Notes
If an error is generated,
glGetString
returns 0.
The client and server may support different versions or extensions.
glGetString
always returns a compatible version number or list of extensions.
The release number always describes the server.
GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION
is available only if the GL version is 2.0 or greater.
Errors
GL_INVALID_ENUM
is generated if
name
is not an accepted value.
GL_INVALID_OPERATION
is generated if
glGetString
is executed between the execution of
glBegin
and the corresponding execution of
glEnd
.
Copyright
Copyright
1991-2006
Silicon Graphics, Inc. This document is licensed under the SGI
Free Software B License. For details, see
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/FreeB/
.
Sample Code References
The following code samples have been found which appear to reference the functions described here. Take care that the code may be old, broken or not even use PyOpenGL.
glGetString