On Feb 22, 2026, at 9:37?AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
Summary:
I'm in the process of a major update to the rgl package and am requesting two kinds of help:
- that users of rgl or packages depending on it could report problems (and wishlist items).
- that experts in setting up complex packages like rgl could help me to rewrite the configuration files.
The new version is available in the "shaders" branch of
https://github.com/dmurdoch/rgl, and for now depends on the small package https://github.com/dmurdoch/rasterText/.
Details:
rgl is an old package to do 3D graphics, written by Daniel Adler and myself with contributions from a large number of people. It has a few hundred reverse dependencies.
The planned update replaces the code from OpenGL 1.2 (released in 1998) with more modern code. Currently I am targeting OpenGL 3.3 Core Profile from 2010, as that seems to be the most widely available version nowadays that is backward compatible with newer versions.
The main benefit of the update is to allow the use of "shaders" within R. These are programs written in the GLSL language to allow fine control of rendering that isn't possible in the (obsolete) "fixed pipeline" used previously. One application I hope to be able to implement soon is the ability to show cross-sections of the interior of 3D solids such as are shown in CT scans.
Because I have replaced essentially all the rendering code to make this update, it's very likely that I've missed some features and introduced some new bugs. Testing by existing users will help me to track down and fix those issues.
I've also rewritten all the text-handling code. Previously there were several different schemes for drawing text, and I'm hoping that nowadays a single one (based on PangoCairo) will work on all platforms. The problem here is that this brings in a complicated set of system dependencies, and I really need help to get the configuration right.
In the current version of the update, this depends on a small package https://github.com/dmurdoch/rasterText/. I intend to bring that code into the main rgl package before release, but first I'd like to get it to pass checks on all platforms, and I really don't know what I'm doing with configuration files.
If anyone can help me in either of these ways, I'd really appreciate it.
Duncan Murdoch