QuickDraw 3D Support Petition

Dear Apple Computer, Inc.,

We use QuickDraw 3D — in 3D games, in 3D design software, in specialized 3D applications, and as a high-level 3D graphics API for efficient software development.

We applaud Apple's new commitment to OpenGL, a successful and broadly supported technology for accelerated 3D rendering.

At present we are confused about Apple's plans for QuickDraw 3D. On one hand, within the last few weeks we have received direct assurances that Apple will be supporting QuickDraw 3D for "the foreseeable future." On the other hand, the surprise absence of QuickDraw 3D from the list of Carbon functions suggests the opposite.

We hope Apple will clarify its attitude about QuickDraw 3D soon. As you do so, we hope you will fully take the views expressed in this petition into account.

We know from experience that QuickDraw 3D provides significant additional value above and beyond OpenGL by itself. Bringing OpenGL to the Mac shouldn't mean the end of QuickDraw 3D. Rather, this should be seen as a very positive opportunity to clarify and focus the important ongoing role that belongs to QuickDraw 3D. And with OpenGL solving the drivers problem, 3dmf and QuickDraw 3D can become a real force in the market.

QuickDraw 3D provides valuable common geometries, an elegant extensible file format, a simple standard viewer, and QuickTime integration, that are otherwise missing from an OpenGL-only approach. As 3D developers, we can build great software faster and cheaper with the high-level QuickDraw 3D API. As digital content creators, we design and present faster and better because the 3dmf format connects together our 3D tool kits.

Specifically, we would like Apple to actively integrate OpenGL and QuickDraw 3D, focusing on OpenGL for immediate mode rendering and low level API, and on QuickDraw 3D for retained geometries, a cross-platform file format, and a fully-documented high level API. For a very minimal engineering investment, you can bring OpenGL and QD3D together into a single layered API, backward and forward compatible, elegantly supporting the full spectrum of 3D on Macintosh.

We would like Apple to commit to supporting QuickDraw 3D in Carbon. For this already-cross-platform technology, it should be a small cost for Apple, relative to the loss of a whole sector of creative developers.

If Apple can't or won't bring QuickDraw 3D into Carbon and integrate it with OpenGL, then we would like Apple to make QuickDraw 3D into an open-source technology, so that the QuickDraw 3D development community has an independent opportunity to nurture what Apple has already brought so far.

Sunsetting the 3dmf format in 1999 or 2000 would be like sunsetting the PICT format in 1987 or 1988. It is that important to the emergence of a broad-based desktop 3D market.

In many cases QuickDraw 3D has been a key technology allowing our organizations to continue Mac-first development strategies in the face of Wintel dominance. Please don't cut this beautiful, inspiring, and extremely productive technology out from under us.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned