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### 9.5 Details of the Mathematica->Geomview Package

The `OOGL.m` package uses the external program `math2oogl` to convert `Graphics3D` objects to OOGL format, because a compiled external program is able to do this conversion many times faster than Mathematica.

The converter will sometimes handle colored SurfaceGraphics objects correctly that Mathematica does not handle correctly, which means that Geomview[object] sometimes works where Show[object] will give errors.

The converter supports the `Polygon`, `Line`, and `Point` graphics primitives, `RGBColor Graphics3D` directives, and `SurfaceGraphics` objects with or without `RGBColor` directives, and lists of any combination of these. It silently ignores all other directives.

The Mathematica to RenderMan conversion is actually a two-step process: Mathematica->OOGL (math2oogl), and OOGL->RenderMan (oogl2rib).

In the `WriteOOGL` and `WriteRIB` commands, filename can either be a string containing a filename, an `OutputStream` object, or a string starting with a `!` to send the output to a command. Object can be a `Graphics3D` object, a `SurfaceGraphics` object, or a list of these.

The packages work best with Mathematica 2.0 or better. With version 1.2, the Geomview display is always on the local host.