CommonJS issues about twgl.js

[greggman]

Try it now, v0.0.30.

I've never used CommonJS outside of node and I had not used browserify. Had to hack a bunch of crap. Not sure if there's a more common solution but it seems to be working

http://twgljs.org/examples/browserify.html

[Prinzhorn]

Awesome, it's working as expected now!

I've never used CommonJS outside of node and I had not used browserify.

I created a simple browserify example using your "tiny" example. I believe this is so much cleaner and better than anything else. I'm just getting into WebGL and couldn't believe that every demo and tutorial I see uses script tags for shaders. Who would do this in production?

https://github.com/Prinzhorn/twgl-browserify

git clone [email protected]:Prinzhorn/twgl-browserify.git
cd twgl-browserify
npm install
npm run watch

Now you're up and running. Your bundle.js (which index.html references) automatically gets updated when you changed index.js or any of the two shader files. You're welcome. (I personally combine this with harp and browser-sync).

[greggman]

Lots of people prefer AMD over CommonJS myself included.

CommonJS requires a compile step, AMD does not but can still be compiled for production. As for script tags, 99% of devs still don't use either AMD or CommonJS so asking them to learn something else before they can use a library is generally a great way to get them not to use it :P

[Prinzhorn]

so asking them to learn something else before they can use a library is generally a great way to get them not to use it

It was not my intend to force anyone into CommonJS at all. I just found it weird to inline something (without having syntax highlighting etc.). I guess it will also get ugly once you need more than one fragment and vertex shader and start using weird IDs and reinvent some structure on top of it.

[greggman]

Plenty of good editors can syntax highlight embedded languages no problem.

As for bigger projects, sure. But bigger projects need all kinds of build
infrastructure. Not just JS concatenation and compression but image
processing steps, 3D asset conditioning steps, sound processing steps, font
glyph generation steps, localization data extraction steps, etc etc.
Shaders is yet another part of that. Engines like unreal/unity can generate
~5000 shaders at build time. It's still far easier to show a single page
example IMO. Want to see how it works right click and look. No digging
through 4,5,6 files

On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Alexander Prinzhorn <
[email protected]> wrote:

so asking them to learn something else before they can use a library is
generally a great way to get them not to use it

It was not my intend to force anyone into CommonJS at all. I just found it
weird to inline something (without having syntax highlighting etc.). I
guess it will also get ugly once you need more than one fragment and vertex
shader and start using weird IDs and reinvent some structure on top of it.

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[Prinzhorn]

Good points. Thanks for creating twgl! And http://webglfundamentals.org/ of course.