The documentation set for OpenGL in Windows NT and Windows 95 includes five elements.
The first two elements are the official OpenGL books: the OpenGL Reference Manual and the OpenGL Programming Guide.
Note The OpenGL Reference Manual and the OpenGL Programming Guide are not included with the Microsoft Platform SDK.
The OpenGL Reference Manual includes an overview of how OpenGL works and a set of detailed reference pages. The reference pages cover all the 115 distinct OpenGL functions, as well as the 43 functions in the OpenGL Utility (GLU) library.
The OpenGL Programming Guide explains how to create graphics programs using OpenGL. It includes discussions of the following major topics:
In addition, the OpenGL Programming Guide contains appendixes that discuss the OpenGL Utility library and the OpenGL Programming Guide Auxiliary library.
The third documentation element is this overview. It describes the Windows NT and Windows 95 implementation of OpenGL and provides an overview of its components. It discusses the concepts of rendering contexts, pixel formats, and buffers; the WGL functions that connect OpenGL to the Windows NT and Windows 95 windowing systems; and the Win32 functions that support per-window pixel formats and double buffering of windows for OpenGL graphics windows. The WGL functions and the Win32 functions are specific to the Windows NT and Windows 95 implementation of OpenGL.
The fourth documentation element is the set of reference pages for the WGL functions, the Win32 functions just mentioned, and the PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR data structure.
The fifth documentation element is Porting to OpenGL. It discusses moving existing OpenGL code from other environments into Windows NT and Windows 95.