Umgebung is a lightweight C++ environment for small audio and graphics based applications. it is inspired by Processing.org and similar environments.
well, Umgebung is actually imitating Processing.org quite bluntly ( e.g the main application class is called PApplet ).
this project aims to supply a framework that allows writing applications that more or less look like original Processing.org sketches. note the character of this project is that features will be added as they are needed. it might partly replicate but not fully emulate the original Processing.org environment.
Umgebung may also function as a statement on what is good and valueable about the Processing.org idiom while at the same time suggesting disconnecting it from one specific group, application or project … maybe a bit like markdown in that sense.
see DOCUMENTATION for usage information and examples for applications.
Umgebung is yet another programming environment for designers, makers, and artists. so why does it exist? and why not use Processing.org, OpenFrameworks, Cinder or any of the other frameworks out there?
well, the main reason, why we even created Umgebung was basically to finally have a derivative of Processing.org that stays very close the original idiom. While Cinder and OpenFrameworks for example are fantastic projects, they differ quite a lot from Processing.org. Umgebung, however, literally imitates, core processing classes and functions.
why not using the original java-based Processing.org then? there are a few key aspects that just cannot and probably will never be resolved due to limitations imposed by Java. while Java is a very well-designed language and does many things better than C/C++, it has some drawbacks.
the most important benefit of moving to C/C++ is the availability of many extremly powerful and wide-spread libraries and APIs ( e.g OpenGL, OpenCV, FFmpeg, PortAudio ) that can be natively used and integrated into applications and sketches without the need for a native binding library. while many of such libraries have been fully or partly made accessible in processing through native bindings, oftentimes these libraries or their bindings introduce significant overhead ( technically, administratively, etcetera ), are not at the current version, are incompatible with never versions of OSes, or do expose all functionality ( e.g unstable webcam support on macOS ). while this also happens with C/C++ libraries and APIs the problems are greatly reduced. also there is still a significant number of libraries and APIs not available for java-based processing or are impossible to port because of limitation posed by java VM implementations ( e.g multi-channel audio ).
in addition to this, due to the nature of C/C++ and the way Umgebung is implemented applications and sketches developed with Umgebung can be built and deployed with a very(!) small memory and CPU footprint. this means that applications and sketches can potentially run on smaller or older hardware like e.g Raspberry Pi. some modules can even be excluded from a build to reduce the footprint even more. Umgebung can even run truly headless ( i.e it does not require any virtual offscreen graphics driver if no window is required ).
furthermore Umgebung uses CMake as a build system. CMake is very well-designed and more or less easy to learn and to extend. this also means that Umgebung applications and sketches can be developed in more or less any text editor or IDE ( e.g Visual Studio Code, Zed, CLion, Vim ). it does not require proprietary build systems like Xcode.
and finally, although C and especially C++ is known for its horrific errors, confusing error messages and volatile behavior at times. with the advent of LLM-based programming assistants, the entry threshold can be greatly reduced. trust the process.
this project relies on the following packages:
- CMake
@version(3.30.3) - pkg-config
@version(0.29.2) - SDL2
@version(2.30.7) - FTGL
@version(2.1.3) - GLEW
@version(2.2.0) - ffmpeg
@version(7.0.2) - rtmidi
@version(6.0.0) - oscpack ( included as source files )
- dr_libs ( included as source files )
- dylibbundler ( only required for bundling standalone macOS applications. it can also be installed via homebrew with
brew install dylibbundler)@version(1.0.5) - PortAudio ( can be used as a replacement for SDL2-based audio. in contrast to SDL2 it can output audio to multiple channels. it can also be installed via homebrew with
brew install portaudio)@version(19.7.0)
( @version(X.X.X) states the version number of the library with which Umgebung has been tested on macOS. other versions might work as well but are not guaranteed to. )
in order to compile and run applications install the following packages with Homebrew:
either manually with:
$ brew install cmake pkgconfig sdl2 ftgl glew ffmpeg rtmidi
or run installer script ./install-macOS.sh ( i.e checking for Homebrew and running the bundler with brew bundle ).
on linux ( including Raspberry Pi OS ) install the required packages with APT:
$ sudo apt-get update -y
$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y
$ sudo apt-get install git clang mesa-utils # optional -y
$ sudo apt-get install cmake pkg-config libsdl2-dev libftgl-dev libglew-dev ffmpeg libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libavdevice-dev librtmidi-dev -y
alternatively, run installer script ./install-linux.sh to install packages with Linuxbrew ( linux version of Homebrew, currently not supported on Raspberry Pi OS ).
RPI currently uses X11 as the rendering system.
also, RPI does not support antialiasing i.e make sure to set the value to 0 in settings:
void settings(){
antialiasing = 0;
}Umgebung was tested on Raspberry Pi 4 ( Model B ) with Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) "Bookworm" ( Release 2024-07-04 ). however, it has not been tested carefully. there might be glitches …
- install MSYS2
- install the following modules with
pacmaninMSYS2 UCRT64:
$ pacman -Syu --noconfirm
$ pacman -S --noconfirm mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cmake git
$ pacman -S --noconfirm mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-glew mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-mesa mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-ftgl mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-SDL2 mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-ffmpeg mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-rtmidi
the setup is exclusively for the MSYS2 UCRT64 branch ( and not for MSYS2 MINGW64 etcetera ). also it uses ninja as a build system instead of make ( which is the default on linux + macOS ).
example applications can be found in the example folder. to run example umgebung-app do the following:
$ cd ./umgebung-examples/examples/umgebung-app/
$ cmake -B build .
$ cmake --build build
$ ./build/umgebung-app
if changes are made to umgebung-app.cpp ( or any other file in that folder ) it is enough to just run:
$ $ make -C build ; ./build/umgebung-app
- a LOT of functions + methods + strategies are not yet implemented (the goal is to implement these on demand).
- color system is fixed to range from
0.0 ... 1.0and only works with RGB(A) and uses RGBA internally always - elements in
println()must be concatenated with,rather than+e.gprintln("hello ", 23, " world"); - only tested on macOS + Raspberry Pi OS + Windows 11 + Ubuntu. although theoretically the external libraries as well as the build system should be cross-platform ( i.e macOS, Windows and any UNIX-like system ) it, however, may require some tweaking.
on some clean homebrew installations on macOS the environment variable $LIBRARY_PATH is not set or at least does not include the
homebrew libraries. if so you may need to add the line export LIBRARY_PATH=$LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib to your profile e.g in ~/.zshrc in zsh shell. note, that other shell environments use other profile files and mechanisms e.g bash uses ~/.bashrc. find out which shell you are using by typing echo $0.
if you have NO idea what this all means you might just try the following lines ( as always without the $ ;) ) for zsh:
$ { echo -e "\n# set library path\n"; [ -n "$LIBRARY_PATH" ] && echo "export LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:\"\$LIBRARY_PATH\"" || echo "export LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib"; } >> "$HOME/.zshrc"
$ source "$HOME/.zshrc"
this will set the $LIBRARY_PATH in your zsh profile file.
examples and library examples assume that all repositories are located on the same level:
.
├── umgebung
├── umgebung-examples
└── umgebung-libraries