[PD] GEM on linux questions

[Stephan Bourgeois]

Hello everybody,

I am new to PD and GEM and I have a few questions. I am using RedHat 7.3 
with the nVidia modules and a TNT2 card. And after reading the much 
heated dbate on PD usability, I must say that I come from a 3d computer 
graphics background and a on the music front from using cSound + 
Cecilia. And I found PD very useable so far. Here are my questions :

1. GEM kills the X11 server when I send a [destroy( message to [gemwin]. 
Is this normal ? A way round the problem is to : stop rendering, close 
the OpenGL window from the desktop, then close the PD project window, at 
which stage PD will crash  "pd_gui: pd process exited".

2. I have had great fun with [pix_coordinate]. Fortunately there are 
very good OpenGL tutorials on the web, maybe the manual could point to 
them. [pix_coordinate] works fine with [cube], but it doesn't seem to 
have any effect on [cylinder] or [sphere], is this normal ?

3. Is there a way I can save to disk a snapshot of the OpenGL 
framebuffer ? I have played with [pix_snap] but I don't know how to 
write the framebuffer into a file.

Thanks.
Stephan.