			      MinneView

			     Release 0.1

		     A General Purpose 3D Viewer
			for IRIS Workstations

			 The Geometry Center
		       1300 South Second Street
			Minneapolis, MN  55454
			    (612) 626-0888


MinneView is a program for viewing objects in three-space.  It can
display either a static object or a changing object.  It currently
runs only on IRIS workstations.

This release contains the binary executable files for MinneView and
some related programs, several example files, and some documentation.

Before running MinneView, you should cd to this directory (the current
directory MUST be this directory for this to work) and type

    % source config

This will set up your search path and an environment variable called
GEOM_PATH which MinneView uses to find its example files.  You should
do this each time you login or start a new shell.  If use MinneView a
lot and want to arrange for this to happen automatically each time you
login, see the config file for instructions on what to put in your
.cshrc file.

For a very quick demo of MinneView, type the command:

    % MinneView dodec.quad

When the window has appeared you should see a dodecahedron inside a
box.  If you put the mouse cursor inside the window and hold down the
left mouse button, you can rotate the dodecahedron around.  Other
viewing operations are also possible; to access them, use the menu
which you get by holding down the right mouse button (you may have to
hold it down for several seconds the first time).  Under the
"Examples" submenu you can load in other example files.

For more of an introduction to MinneView, see the file
"pretutorial.txt".  This includes an example which displays a changing
object.

For all the details, see the manual page, in the file
"man/MinneView.man".

MinneView can display a wide variety of objects in addition to the
"quad" files of the above examples.  The file "man/oogl.man" describes
these formats.

MinneView was written especially for use by mathematicians, because
the objects of interest to mathematicians do not always easily fit
into the datatypes recognized by many commercial modeling/viewing
programs.  MinneView is part of a larger software package called the
"Object Oriented Graphics Library" (OOGL) which allows easy addition
of new types of objects.

The current version was written specifically for IRIS workstations for
use at the Geometry Center.  We are currently in the process of
re-writing OOGL and MinneView, and the new version will be easier to
use, will run on a wider variety of workstations, and will have
significant other differences from the present version.  For this
reason we are currently releasing just MinneView and the other
supporting programs in this directory (rather than the entire OOGL
library).

We anticipate that the next version will be ready in January 1992.  In
the meantime, we hope that the present version will be of some use.
We welcome suggestions of improvements to be incorporated into the
next version.  Please email all comments and suggestions to
"software@geom.umn.edu", or mail to the address above.


			    LIST OF FILES
			    ---- -- -----


README			This file

COPYRIGHT		Copyright notice

config			Configuration script

pretutorial.txt		Preliminary intro to MinneView, in ascii form.  NOTE:
			  the example programs from this tutorial are in
			  the "examples" subdirectory.

pretutorial.tex		Same as pretutorial.txt, but as a plain TeX document


bin			Subdirectory containing executables


    bin/MinneView	    The 3D viewer.  See manual page in "man"
			    directory for details.

    bin/smem		    Shared memory mangement program.  See manual
			    page in "man" directory for details.

    bin/mpool		    A program for debugging problems with shared
			    memory.

    bin/stuff		    Stuffs a data file into shared memory for
			    MinneView to display.  See manual page in
			    "man" directory for details.

    bin/medit		    Edit lighting and material properties for
			    MinneView.  See manual page in "man" directory
			    for details.

    bin/cleanoff	    Copies an OFF file to another OFF file,
			    merging identical vertices and removing
			    duplicated vertices in polygon faces.  It also
			    counts the number of edges.

    bin/mktorus		    Constructs an N-holed torus from Bezier patch
			    components taken from the "data" directory.

    bin/oogl2off	    Converts a MESH or QUAD file to an OFF file,
			    stripping normals and optionally colors, if
			    any.

    bin/oogl2quad	    Converts a MESH, OFF or QUAD object to QUAD
			    format, optionally stripping any normals and
			    colors.

    bin/oogl2conf	    Converts a MESH, OFF, or QUAD object lying in
			    the unit sphere, representing a polygonal
			    object in the projective model of hyperbolic
			    3-space, into a collection of NQUAD's
			    approximating that object in the conformal
			    model.

    bin/quad2tri	    Programs used by oogl2conf.  They must be in
    bin/tri2poinc	    the search path when running it.

    bin/vect2ps		    Converts a VECT file to PostScript, using the
			    viewing transformation matrix given in the
			    file view####.rib.  You can use MinneView to
			    generate this file (pick the Rman Transform
			    option under the Save menu).

data			Subdirectory containing various example data files

    csquare.quad
    dodec.quad
    ref1.grp
    square.quad
    torus.bez
    cube.off
    ico.grp
    ref2.list
    tor21A.bez
    torus2.oogl
    dodec.off
    icosa.off
    sample.mesh
    tor21B.bez
    xyz.vect


examples		Subdirectory containing some example data-generating
			programs, illustrating the use of the "stuff" program
			for sending data to MinneView.

    examples/Makefile	    The makefile for these programs.

    examples/stuffdemo.c    Draws a moving surface.

    examples/updown.c	    Draws two squares which move past each other.

    examples/updownbin.c    Same as updown.c, but sends the data to MinneView
			    in binary format rather than ASCII.

man			Subdirectory containing manual pages, in Unix
			manual page format. Files with suffix ".1" are
			nroff source code.  Files with suffix ".man"
			are preformatted ASCII versions.

    man/MinneView.1
    man/MinneView.man
    man/stuff.1
    man/stuff.man
    man/oogl.man
    man/oogl.5
    man/medit.1
    man/medit.man
    man/smem.1
    man/smem.man
