> I believe the authors original point is why not provide the shim support as part of OpenGL ES in the first place?
OpenGL ES isn't intended to be the same API as OpenGL, despite the shared "OpenGL" in the name. It was a new API created with the idea that it would be based on the lessons learned from OpenGL, but be completely modern and not bogged down with the need for embedded driver authors to waste time implementing tons of legacy crap calls that nobody in their right mind should have been using for the last 10 years anyways. It uses the opportunity afforded by building a new API for a different target environment from normal OpenGL as an excuse to make all of the breaking changes that everybody would love to make in regular OpenGL if only there weren't so much legacy software that depended on the presence of deprecated, decade out-of-date practices.
That's why OpenGL ES never contained all of the immediate mode cruft from OpenGL, and OpenGL ES 2.0 throws out the fixed-function pipeline altogether.
Why didn't the Kronos group define a shim to begin with? When your goal is to build a new API that throws out all of the shit legacy calls that are a bunch of pain to support for no benefit, what do you gain by then re-implementing all of those shit legacy calls again? Any number of people have built a fake immediate mode on top of OpenGL ES over the years; there's nothing new about what jwz did here. If you really want to write OpenGL ES as if it's 1998's OpenGL, there's nothing stoping you from doing so.
OpenGL ES isn't intended to be the same API as OpenGL, despite the shared "OpenGL" in the name. It was a new API created with the idea that it would be based on the lessons learned from OpenGL, but be completely modern and not bogged down with the need for embedded driver authors to waste time implementing tons of legacy crap calls that nobody in their right mind should have been using for the last 10 years anyways. It uses the opportunity afforded by building a new API for a different target environment from normal OpenGL as an excuse to make all of the breaking changes that everybody would love to make in regular OpenGL if only there weren't so much legacy software that depended on the presence of deprecated, decade out-of-date practices.
That's why OpenGL ES never contained all of the immediate mode cruft from OpenGL, and OpenGL ES 2.0 throws out the fixed-function pipeline altogether.
Why didn't the Kronos group define a shim to begin with? When your goal is to build a new API that throws out all of the shit legacy calls that are a bunch of pain to support for no benefit, what do you gain by then re-implementing all of those shit legacy calls again? Any number of people have built a fake immediate mode on top of OpenGL ES over the years; there's nothing new about what jwz did here. If you really want to write OpenGL ES as if it's 1998's OpenGL, there's nothing stoping you from doing so.