Successful cross platform non-game software

What are some popular, broadly used, non-game programs that run on Linux, Mac, and Windows/PC, like SL does?

Do these programs use OpenGL?

I believe the GIMP does.

Open Office does.

Open Office is one I was already thinking of. It's an excellent example of what I am looking for.

Do GIMP and Open Office use OpenGL to draw their displays, menus, etc., or do they use the normal, platform specific methods of displaying their text, title bars, buttons, and other interface elements?

OpenOffice on the Windows systems I use seems like a normal Windows app with a normal Windows-style interface.

Firefox and Safari (Google showed a download for it on Linux anyway ) for browsers .

I don't think Firefox uses OpenGL, does it?

LL wants to have millions of concurrent uses of SL and many times that active users of SL.

I'm just wondering what cross platform programs have that kind of userbase, and whether their displays are done with using a cross platform system like OpenGl, or whether their displays are done with platform specific display methods, such as using Windows control elements like the dialog boxes, drop down lists, menus, etc. that ones finds in very popular programs like MS Word, Quicken, etc.

The SL interface is a cross-platform library called GTK. I think GIMP uses the same library. It doesn't use Windows widgets on Windows, it doesn't use Mac OS widgets on the Mac, and it doesn't use X widgets on Linux, and that's why it doesn't look like a native interface on any of them.

Ahh yeah, I remember reading about GTK in the gimp installation instructions.

GIMP is often described as being extremely hard to use. Does GIMP have, say, ten million concurrent users?

From my memory of my small amount of time using GIMP, I don't recall it looking particularly weird. I didn't like the way it works, but it didn't strike me as being oddball in it's appearance.

The OpenOffice interface may be coded specifically for each platform. I seem to recall the first version for the Mac used X11, but that it was later ported to native Mac OS. The same probably happened for Windows. Or maybe (but I don't think so) it used WxWidgets, which is another cross-platform interface but it uses each platforms native widgets. It isn't very fully-developed, though.

If you google OpenOffice you'll probably quickly discover how it was built for each platform.

OpenGL is for 3D display. Second Life uses both GTK, an open-source GUI library, for menus, sliders, dialogs, etc, and OpenGL, an open-source 3D library, for display of avatars, prims, terrain, etc.

For 3D graphics, Maya and Blender are both available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Both use OpenGL.

For 2D graphics, GIMP is available for all three platforms, as has been mentioned. Photoshop is available for Windows and Mac, but not directly for Linux. I've heard there's been success in making Photoshop work with Linux by using Wine, but I don't know much about it.

I seem to recall that the pie menu in SL is part of OpenGl. Is that correct or not?

The "it" in my first post was Second Life. It doesn't look native on any platform. GTK is fairly flexible, though, so GIMP may make more effort to look native, or GIMP may also use some platform-native controls. I'll bet, though, if you were to carefully examine the behavior of GIMP controls you'd find they work slightly differently than controls in, say, Excel. Certainly they didn't use the standard Windows file dialog.

It looks like SL uses platform-native file dialogs. There may be other native pieces. They could have made more effort to make it look more native on each platform, but it looks instead like they wanted it to look identical on all three, and that was likely easier to accomplish.

No clue, but that wouldn't be my guess. It looks too much like the rest of the interface. I'd guess it was GTK. I'd check it with my hacked version of the client, which lets me turn off 3D rendering, except that I can't right-click anything with 3D rendering turned off

It sounds like you're trying to determine if SL's problems are due to OpenGL so that you can make a JIRA suggestion for LL to switch to a different approach to graphics, in which case, no SL's problems aren't because of OpenGL.

First off, asking whether or not a given application uses OpenGL or platform specific display methods is vastly over-simplifying the situation. For example, in OSX technically EVERYTHING uses OpenGL. Y'see, the "platform specific display methods" for OSX (in particular GUI widgets such as you mention, everything that falls under the Aqua display technology) are in fact built using OpenGL. Thus, even if the developer isn't writing OpenGL routines directly, anyone creating an application for OSX is using OpenGL.

Second, OpenGL is mostly for 3D graphics, while the majority of applications (certainly all the ones named so far) are not using 3D graphics. The only relevant comparisons would be with 3D applications like the ones Chosen mentioned, Maya and Blender. Note that those (well Maya anyway) use OpenGL for displaying 3D graphics, and native GUI widgets for windows and file requesters and whatnot.

Third and most importantly, it doesn't matter anyway because SL's problems aren't due to client-side rendering issues, they are due to server and network issues. The graphics could be drawn using a computer-controlled watergun squirting ink at an easel, and that wouldn't change anything as far as the performance of the asset server.

At the risk of sounding patronizing, you probably shouldn't be too specific in making technical suggestions if you don't understand all of the technical details. I mean, is my original supposition about your intentions correct?

Correction: with 3D graphics turned off I'm still able to get the pie menu. I just have no clue what I clicked So no, I don't think it's OpenGL. It's almost certainly GTK.

It just occurred to me that perhaps you're intending to suggest SL uses standard UI elements for each platform, in which case you should have asked about that directly. Again, your ignorance of the technical details is confusing the issue here. Using OpenGL does not preclude using standard UI elements for each platform, so if that's what you're getting at then your question was completely off the mark. The decision isn't "OpenGL or native GUI?" it is "custom GUI or native GUI?"

While the original question was innocent, if a little unusual, your later posts hint at a deeper agenda, which I'm now attempting to guess at. You really should have just stated your agenda up-front in the first post.


Also, now that I've facetiously suggested this bizarre display technology, I actually want to build this.

Second Life has many problems that aren't due to server or network issues at all.

In the latest release candidate, for example, the text for some of the buttons in some of the dialog boxes extends beyond not just the button but out of the dialog box itself.

That problem has nothing to do with server or network issues.

I think such a problem has something to do with how the viewer is created, both in the sense of how it's done technically, such as whether the interface is designed with something like, say, Visual Studio, which has premade control elements that deal automatically with such things as keeping button text inside buttons, and how it's done from a human viewpoint, such as what gets tested by who, and who gets to decide what text goes on what part of the interface.

I think if you want to create a 3D internet with something approaching the number of users that the current 2D net has it's extremely important how the viewer works, how it feels to users.

It's important, for example, that the display is quick. A computer controlled squirt gun is very unlikely to have a satisfying FPS rate, especially if it has to squirt out multi-hundred flexiprim hair designs for dozens of avatars at a club.

SL has problems such as: new users to SL are fairly commonly exposed to the display of hundreds of images of shit covered penises. This has nothing to do with server or network issues, but I think it's quite likely to be a problem for customer retention.

LL wants to have tens of millions of concurrent users. It's marketing SL to businesses, schools, and non-profits. Businesses don't want to pay for training people to use non-standard interfaces. I work with people that have been using Windows computers for over a decade and they don't know how to do things like cut and paste. They don't recognize things like the little triangles on some interface elements that indicate there are flyout menus.

I have no specific agenda so far as making a Jira suggestion. How could I, the Jira system is way too complex for a technical incompetent like me.

ah okay thanks for making your position a little clearer. This is what I meant by "a deeper agenda"; whether or not you were intending to make a JIRA suggestion, it seemed to me that you were getting at something other than just listing cross-platform apps. However, you're still kinda beating around the bush; where are you going with all this?


I never meant to suggest that you are technically incompetent, so sorry if it came across that way. The ignorance I was referring to was specifically ignorance of the details of what OpenGL is/does. Turning that point around, I would consider myself technically competent, but I am ignorant of the details of a great many technical things (like, say, how to switch back to the first conversation when using call waiting on my cell phone.)