Wanted - 80's era Graphics programming in C tutorials

[dbwr]

I believe these came in standard library set supplied with Personal Iris.
They were magenta ring-bindered and I think had 2 volumes.
I was part way through the books when got laid off.
Specifically, one section had you design a baseball ball game with calculating arc of hit ball.
(for nostalgia mostly)

(Ed- I have an O² I hope to finish the tutorial on)

 

[KayBee]

Oh man, this sounds like a Rosetta Stone for me. I haven't heard of it. If I come across it I'll share it.

 

[AstridRedfern]

MAJOR EDIT: YOU SHOULD SKIP THIS POST AND GO STRAIGHT TO THE ONE BELOW, IN WHICH I DISCUSS A DOCUMENT I AM 90% SURE *IS* THE ONE YOU'RE LOOKING FOR. THE DOCUMENTS I MENTION HERE MAY STILL BE OF INTEREST TO YOU, BUT CHECK THEM OUT *AFTER* YOU'VE LOOKED AT MY NEXT POST.

I've been searching for these. I don't seem to have found anything with that baseball game exercise (actually, see note above), but let me talk about what I *did* find.

First of all, let's look at http://archive.irixnet.org/apocrypha/nekonomicon/forum/7/16726825/1.html

I recently obtained a personal IRIS with a complete documentation set, circa 1990/1991. I'm in the process of scanning everything and getting it uploaded to bitsavers. ... Completed scans are in http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/...

...


OK, IRIS GL user guide and reference are uploaded!

Graphics Library Reference Manual C Edition v4.0 Sep, 1990

Graphcis Library Programming Guide v2.0 May, 1990

...

All the manuals I had are scanned and have been uploaded to bitsavers . I have also added them all into manx .

If anyone else has scanned Personal IRIS or IRIS terminal manuals and has them online, please post the URL so I can add them to manx.

OK, let's take a look. This "manx" site (http://manx.classiccmp.org/) no longer appears to exist. It *is* on archive.org (https://web.archive.org/web/20160403185025/http://manx.classiccmp.org/) - though I must say the interface looks familiar and I suspect it exists with a different name and domain somewhere on the current Internet. Anyway, when I look for SGI stuff, a couple of redirects occur and I'm taken to https://web.archive.org/web/20190704005130/http://manx-docs.org/search.php?cp=109&q= - a URL which is valid today, leading me to https://manx-docs.org/search.php?q=&start=0&cp=109

The Bitsavers link, meanwhile, takes us to:

Index of /pdf/sgi/iris4d

which has links to some documents that may at least resemble the one you're looking for, or have come in the same set as it:

IRIS-4D Programmer's Guide Volume I v1.1 (May 1990) (http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-0601-010_IRIS-4D_Programmers_Guide_Volume_I_v1.1_May_1990.pdf)

IRIS-4D Programmer's Guide Volume II v1.0 (1987) (http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-0601-010_IRIS-4D_Programmers_Guide_Volume_II_v1.0_1987.pdf)

Graphics_Library Programming Guide v2.0 (May 1990) (http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-1210-020_Graphics_Library_Programming_Guide_v2.0_May_1990.pdf) This is the closest match to the document you describe, since section 2-35 does have some material on drawing arcs.

Porting Applications to the IRIS-4D Family v1.1 (1988) (http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-0909-010_Porting_Applications_to_the_IRIS-4D_Family_v1.1_1988.pdf)

and various other, less likely, candidates. Some of which I think you should still check out.

Back to the manx-docs.org link. Checking that site out, I can find links to the Bitsavers-hosted Programmers Guide Volumes I and II, but they're the same links I posted above so I won't repeat them here. I couldn't really find anything else that looked likely, and the other documents I did check didn't match yours. But you may want to take a look anyway.

archive.org also hosts the Graphics Library Programming Guide v2.0 - see https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_sgiiris4d0braryProgrammingGuidev2.0May1990_30479259/page/n395/mode/2up

Somehow or other I got to searching techpubs.jurassic.nl, which has Volume 1 of a different version of the Graphics Library Programming Guide. One of the type-in example programs involves animation for bouncing balls:

https://techpubs.jurassic.nl/library/manuals/1000/007-1210-060/pdf/007-1210-060.pdf

I think Volume 2 of that same edition is at https://irix7.com/techpubs/007-1702-020.pdf

https://techpubs.jurassic.nl/manuals/0530/developer/Perf_PG/sgi_html/pr01.html mentions another document - "Graphics Library Programming Tools and Techniques". And I appear to have found that document at https://irix7.com/techpubs/007-1489-030.pdf - but it doesn't have anything like that baseball example.

A Google for

site:techpubs.jurassic.nl arc ball

showed up some possibilites, like an OpenGL porting guide, but nothing I'd have considered a match.

 

[AstridRedfern]

I THINK I'VE FOUND IT.

(This document version is focused on "IRIS series 2000 or 3000" so would have pre-dated your Personal IRIS. However, v1.0 appears to be the only version ever printed as far as I can tell, so this would be the one you read. Unfortunately, the printed document on its own only contains parts of the baseball example, the rest of which appears either to have been already present in a directory on the IRIS or to have come on a separate disc. Could I ask owners of IRISes 2000-3000 and 4D to read the below and check the contents of the directories mentioned on their systems? Thanks.)

A MUCH closer match than anything I posted above - the "IRIS Programming Tutorial v1.0" from 1986.

The first page to mention all of a "baseball program", a "parabolic path", and a "hitter"

sgi :: iris :: 007-1103-010 IRIS Programming Tutorial v1.0 1986 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

From the bitsavers.org collection, a scanned-in computer-related document.sgi :: iris :: 007-1103-010 IRIS Programming Tutorial v1.0 1986

archive.org

Workshop
parabola14 adds one more piece of realism to the baseball program.
The ball travels in a parabolic path from the batter's box to the ground.

On an earlier page:

Workshop
view13.c lets you see the diamond and the ball from two different angles. First you see the diamond and the hit from your usual angle. Then, after a short pause, you see an instant replay from a new vantage point established with poiarview.

There seem to be a lot of these "Workshop" snippets that sound like they're giving you "do more dev work on a baseball game" exercises. The rest of the text doesn't mention this game, I think it must be relying on a disc of source code examples/exercises that would have come with the book. Working back through them:

Workshop
compositel2.c uses the modeling transformations and matrix manipulation routines to make the ball move more realistically.

Workshop
translate11.c moves the ball using modeling transformations

Look over the code for queue7.c to see another queue in action. Also read through the code for menu8.c. It shows you how to add a pop-up menu to the baseball example.

Take a look at aim6. The batter hits the ball to the spot where you
click the mouse button

Workshop
Look over colored2. c in the
/usr/people/tutorial/c.graphics/src/workshop directory. It adds some life to the baseball diamond.

Workshop
Look over the code for diamond1.c in the
/usr/people/tutorial/c.graphics/src/workshop directory. It draws a baseball diamond. For now it's a 2D, non-interactive program. In each workshop, you will add to this basic program, until it contains all of the concepts and routines that you learn in this tutorial. The end result will be a 3D baseball diamond with simulated movement and perspective

Workshops
Workshops are also programs. They help you learn to implement a concept. To use a workshop, read the source code to understand how it works, then compile and run it. The source code for Workshops is in /usr/people/tutorial/c.graphics/src/workshop; executable code is in /usr/people/tutorial/c.graphics/workshop

The below Internet Archive links open it on earlier moving-ball examples/exercises that I think would have led up to you tackling that one:

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_sgiiris007ingTutorialv1.01986_31668010/page/n39/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_sgiiris007ingTutorialv1.01986_31668010/page/n71/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_sgiiris007ingTutorialv1.01986_31668010/page/n73/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_sgiiris007ingTutorialv1.01986_31668010/page/n117/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_sgiiris007ingTutorialv1.01986_31668010/page/n131/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_sgiiris007ingTutorialv1.01986_31668010/page/n137/mode/2up

A different scan of the document is hosted at
https://www.rcsri.org/library/80s/IRIS-Programming-Tutorial.pdf
However, this one wasn't OCRed, so the text isn't highlight-able, copy-able or searchable. Still, the rings of the ring-binder are visible in perfect photo-quality, so it may be good for a bit of a nostalgia trip.

AND... while the above is focused on C code (as you requested), there was also a Fortran version! A sadly non-OCRed scan of that version is linked to via https://manx-docs.org/details.php/109,18328 - direct link is https://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris/007-1104-010_IRIS_Programming_Tutorial_FORTRAN_Edition_v1.0_1986.pdf. Oh, and it's also hosted at https://doc.lagout.org/science/0_Computer Science/0_Computer History/old-hardware/sgi/iris/007-1104-010_IRIS_Programming_Tutorial_FORTRAN_Edition_v1.0_1986.pdf

Now - about my mentioning that necessary source code was located in certain directories (and ditto the binaries) - it MAY be that you have to install/compile something first. If so, these MAY be the instructions for the IRIS 3000 series (and for the specific IRIS 2000s with Turbo): http://typewritten.org/Articles/SGI/007-3206-010.pdf (BTW, if any IRIS 3000 owners, and/or IRIS 2000-with-turbo owners would be kind enough to look into that, I would be very grateful indeed!)

I have checked to see if there are https versions of any of the typewritten.org URLs, and it seems not. So, unfortunately, I'll have to post plain old http URLS for that domain!

An alternative, non-OCRed scan of that last document is at: https://doc.lagout.org/science/0_Computer Science/0_Computer History/old-hardware/sgi/iris/007-3206-010_GL2-W3.6_Release_Notes_1987.pdf

Meanwhile, older versions of the installation document - probably for slightly older software releases - are also hosted at typewritten.org. But http://typewritten.org/Articles/SGI/007-3204-010.pdf is the only one to mention the relevant software - none of the other older versions do.

 

[KayBee]

Great detective work Redfern! I hope someone has the associated directories.

 

[AstridRedfern]

Great detective work Redfern!

Elementary, my dear Watson! You know my methods, and something's afoot!