Name

glGetString - return a string describing the current GL connection

C Specification

const GLubyte * glGetString(GLenum name)

Parameters

name

Specifies a symbolic constant, one of GL_VENDOR, GL_RENDERER, GL_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 the particular OpenGL ES profile as well as the version of that profile.

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 string uses one of the following forms:

OpenGL ES-CM followed by major_number.minor_number for the common profile.

OpenGL ES-CL followed by major_number.minor_number for the common-lite profile.

All strings are null-terminated.

Notes

If an error is generated, glGetString returns NULL.

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.

Errors

GL_INVALID_ENUM is generated if name is not an accepted value.

Copyright

Copyright © 2003-2004 Silicon Graphics, Inc.

This document is licensed under the SGI Free Software B License. For details, see http://oss.sgi.com/projects/FreeB/.