The MT Library

THE MT LIBRARY

Organization of code

The code of the MT libraries is written in ANSI C++. The MT libraries are distributed open-source under the GNU General Public License.

The MT directory is organized as follows:

                             MT
                              |
        +-------+-----+-------+------+-----+
        |       |     |       |      |     |
     include   src   demo    doc    lib   util
        |       |     
  +-----+       +-----+
  |     |       |     |
 krnl  ext     krnl  ext

include: header files for the MT libraries (kernel and extension).
src: source code for the MT libraries (kernel and extension).
demo: a few programs demonstrating applications of the MT; more programs will be added in the future.
data: files containing some MTs and related features (tile errors, vertex normals).
doc: documentation (these html pages). The entry point is file index.html.
lib: libraries resulting from compiling the kernel and the extension.
util: some utility programs.

Remarks

Directory doc must be downloaded separately.
The main directory is named MT here, while its name may vary depending on the release you are using (for Unix or for Windows).

Source code and header files

Subdirectory src and include are divided into:

Kernel: MT, extractors, building interface, basic attribute tables.
Extensions: specialized attributes and attribute tables, specialized building interfaces, customized MTs, customized extraction conditions.

Kernel and Extensions are composed of a hierarchy of C++ classes which are compiled into two libraries.

Kernel

This is the standard MT library, containing classes for:

The plain MT (without user-defined features), and the related building interface;
The base class for extraction conditions;
The extractors (global static, global dynamic, local extractor);
Predefined attribute tables for storing ints, chars, floats, bits, and vectors of such types.

System extension

This part contains classes implementing:

Features that can be added to an MT: tile errors, field values, vertex normals.
Customized MTs with one or more of such features, and related building interfaces.
Specialized extractions conditions, some of them referring to MTs having certain features.

The classes here are provided as examples. By using such examples as templates, you can define your own customized MTs, building interfaces, and extraction conditions.

Demos

We provide a few programs demonstrating the use of the MT.

A demo for terrain MTs.
A demo for two-dimensional MTs representing the boundary of a solid object in 3D.

Most programs use OpenGL and Glut for graphical display. More demos will be added in the future.

Documentation

A copy of this on-line documentation is provided with the MT libraries.

MT files

MT files are text files containing an MT and its attributes.

Some sample MTs, sufficient for running the demos, are included within the MT libraries (within sub-directories of directory demo).
More MTs can be downloaded separately and put into directory data.

Utilities

We provide a few utility programs manipulating an MT:

for reversing the orientation of triangles in a two-dimemsional MT
for computing vertex normals in a two-dimemsional MT
for converting an MT file into either ASCII or BINARY format
for computing statistical information on an MT

You can find more information on such utility programs here.

Download

Go to the download.html"> download page.