What is the reason to use GL_FRONT_LEFT in wglMakeCurrent()

[Tomas Carnecky]

Huw D M Davies wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 02:23:01AM +0100, Tomas Carnecky wrote:
>> GL_FRONT and GL_FRONT_LEFT mean the same unless the drawable is stereo.
>> And I don't think PBuffers or Pixmaps can be stereo, so is there any
>> special reason to use GL_FRONT_LEFT ? Or is it because the spec sais so?
> 
> See man glXCreateGLXPixmap.  The X pixmap is used as the front left
> buffer of the resulting rendering area, so we make sure that we're
> rendering into the X pixmap, not some dummy buffer created by
> glXCreateGLXPixmap.
> 

Ok, but see what happens if an application has one rendering context,
one window (doublebuffered) and one pbuffer (doublebuffered or not),
activates the window (per default the backbuffer is selected for
rendering), then activates the pbuffer (together with the same context),
now wglMakeCurrent() calls glDrawBuffer(GL_FRONT_LEFT), so the
frontbuffer is selected for rendering, and now the application again
activates the window and now it suddenly renders into the frontbuffer,
instead of the backbuffer like it thinks.

wglMakeCurrent() isn't supposed to change the rendering context state
(someone prove me wrong, I couldn't find any good description of this
function, but neither does glXMakeCurrent) and application can make
assumptions according to that.

I don't have any wgl-pbuffer demos here, those from the nvidia sdk don't
run (and won't for a looong time, sadly). And one application to test it
with apparently isn't enough.

I have written a test for windows (to test whether wglMakeCurrent
changes the drawbuffer or not), but nobody of my friends has a graphics
card that supportd pbuffers.

tom