Customer Reviews

Handbook of Geometric Programming Using Open Geometry GL

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

The 700 page book is worth reading: It's actually a geometry book that tells you about many geometric details which you might never have heard about before: I did not know, e.g., about a quite useful developable surface named "wobbler" or "oloid", and how one can fold and unfold such surfaces via computer. The book comes with a ready to use software. The user writes little C++-programs that are linked to the library. The code of the librabry is just there to be compiled, and is not very well documented. However, it need not, since the user should only focus on his oder her part. Therefore, templets are provided that can be modified (learning by doing). Within a few hours, one is familiar with the system.

Open Geometry is a collection of C++ classes making it easy to program advanced three-dimensional graphics. The classes correspond to geometrical objects like spheres, conics, "path curves", b-spline surfaces etc. Open Geometry is distributed as source code, so you get, e.g., a project to open in Microsoft Visual C++. You can add your own source code to that project (or a copy of it). What makes the book so interesting, are the given 101 well-explained examples. Together with a large number of instructives figures, they build up a geometry book about kinematics, projective geometry, differential geometry etc. This seems to be a missing link between theory and programming practice. I recommend it!!

Don't waste your money. This is some of the most unorganized, poorly commented code I've ever seen. Some of the code is in German! The book is in English so silly me, I expected the code to be use English words for variable and function names. An example of their lack of attention to detail is the first example in the book (circumcircle) is not even in try.cpp. Yes, I fixed the example myself, but this is an example of the author's sloppiness. How about file names like a.cpp, b.cpp, c.cpp, etc! This was an ... waste of time for me.

the book and associated library look interesting.
i have not read it, only flipped through it.
i almost bought it but decided to do a bit of research
before hand. i'm glad i did, because the open geometry
library is in fact a closed source library
(as i understand it you must buy the book to get the source).
the word open is apparently derived from opengl.
the problem is that the word open in opengl is the 'open' of 'open standards' and 'open source'.
this is at best an ignorance of the current trends
in the software development world, and at worst, plain misleading.
when the authors either change the library's
license or the library's name to more directly reflect the true
nature of its license, i'll be glad to buy the book and review it again.
i think that they would find that by open sourcing their business model
they would stand to make a lot more money, as they are not really
in the business of selling software, but selling books. who wants to buy
buy a book about an obscure closed source library that could disappear tomorrow?