HACKING

This file describes some hacking techniques and tips & tricks that are
common for the GUI interface toolkits.

Be sure to check Coin/HACKING for Coin-specific tricks and more
generic information, plus the file HACKING (if present) on the
sourcecode root of the "parent" toolkit CVS module.


0 Finding Component Information
===============================

  We have added some easter eggs to the debug versions of the
  GUI toolkit libraries that can be used to find information
  about which components are in use.

  Typing 'glinfo' in a viewer will probe into all kinds of information
  from the GL driver and open a window displaying it.

  Typing 'ivinfo' in a viewer will probe about the underlying Open
  Inventor implementation and display it in a new window.

  Typing 'soinfo' in a viewer will open a window with some basic
  information about the toolkit library and possibly the native
  toolkit it has been built on.


1 Performance profiling / debugging
===================================

  If you are doing work related to rendering performance, you will
  probably want to see frames-per-second statistics when spinning
  models, etc.  If you set the environment variable
  COIN_SHOW_FPS_COUNTER to "1", a fps counter should show up in the
  bottom left corner of the GL canvas when you do animation (spinning,
  zooming, etc) in the viewer components.