## High Level Meta Textures

High Level Meta Textures — Interface for high-level textures built from low-level textures like CoglTexture2D and CoglTexture3D.

## Synopsis

                        CoglMetaTexture;
    void                (*CoglMetaTextureCallback)          (CoglTexture *sub_texture,
                                                             const float *sub_texture_coords,
                                                             const float *meta_coords,
                                                             void *user_data);
    void                cogl_meta_texture_foreach_in_region (CoglMetaTexture *meta_texture,
                                                             float tx_1,
                                                             float ty_1,
                                                             float tx_2,
                                                             float ty_2,
                                                             CoglPipelineWrapMode wrap_s,
                                                             CoglPipelineWrapMode wrap_t,
                                                             CoglMetaTextureCallback callback,
                                                             void *user_data);

## Description

Cogl helps to make it easy to deal with high level textures such as CoglAtlasTextures, CoglSubTextures, CoglTexturePixmapX11 textures and CoglTexture2DSliced textures consistently.

A CoglMetaTexture is a texture that might internally be represented by one or more low-level CoglTextures such as CoglTexture2D or CoglTexture3D. These low-level textures are the only ones that a GPU really understands but because applications often want more high-level texture abstractions (such as storing multiple textures inside one larger "atlas" texture) it's desirable to be able to deal with these using a common interface.

For example the GPU is not able to automatically handle repeating a texture that is part of a larger atlas texture but if you use `COGL_PIPELINE_WRAP_MODE_REPEAT` with an atlas texture when drawing with `cogl_rectangle()` you should see that it "Just Works™" - at least if you don't use multi-texturing. The reason this works is because `cogl_rectangle()` internally understands the CoglMetaTexture interface and is able to manually resolve the low-level textures using this interface and by making multiple draw calls it can emulate the texture repeat modes.

Cogl doesn't aim to pretend that meta-textures are just like real textures because it would get extremely complex to try and emulate low-level GPU semantics transparently for these textures. The low level drawing APIs of Cogl, such as `cogl_draw_attributes()` don't actually know anything about the CoglMetaTexture interface and its the developer's responsibility to resolve all textures referenced by a CoglPipeline to low-level textures before drawing.

If you want to develop custom primitive APIs like `cogl_rectangle()` and you want to support drawing with CoglAtlasTextures or CoglSubTextures for example, then you will need to use this CoglMetaTexture interface to be able to resolve high-level textures into low-level textures before drawing with Cogl's low-level drawing APIs such as `cogl_draw_attributes()`.

### Note

Most developers won't need to use this interface directly but still it is worth understanding the distinction between low-level and meta textures because you may find other references in the documentation that detail limitations of using meta-textures.

## Details

### CoglMetaTexture

    typedef struct _CoglMetaTexture CoglMetaTexture;

### CoglMetaTextureCallback ()

    void                (*CoglMetaTextureCallback)          (CoglTexture *sub_texture,
                                                             const float *sub_texture_coords,
                                                             const float *meta_coords,
                                                             void *user_data);

A callback used with `cogl_meta_texture_foreach_in_region()` to retrieve details of all the low-level CoglTextures that make up a given CoglMetaTexture.

`sub_texture` : | A low-level CoglTexture making up part of a CoglMetaTexture.
`sub_texture_coords` : | A float 4-tuple ordered like (tx1,ty1,tx2,ty2) defining what region of the current `sub_texture` maps to a sub-region of a CoglMetaTexture. (tx1,ty1) is the top-left sub-region coordinate and (tx2,ty2) is the bottom-right. These are low-level texture coordinates.
`meta_coords` : | A float 4-tuple ordered like (tx1,ty1,tx2,ty2) defining what sub-region of a CoglMetaTexture this low-level `sub_texture` maps too. (tx1,ty1) is the top-left sub-region coordinate and (tx2,ty2) is the bottom-right. These are high-level meta-texture coordinates.
`user_data` : | A private pointer passed to `cogl_meta_texture_foreach_in_region()`.

Since 1.10

Stability Level: Unstable

### cogl_meta_texture_foreach_in_region ()

    void                cogl_meta_texture_foreach_in_region (CoglMetaTexture *meta_texture,
                                                             float tx_1,
                                                             float ty_1,
                                                             float tx_2,
                                                             float ty_2,
                                                             CoglPipelineWrapMode wrap_s,
                                                             CoglPipelineWrapMode wrap_t,
                                                             CoglMetaTextureCallback callback,
                                                             void *user_data);

Allows you to manually iterate the low-level textures that define a given region of a high-level CoglMetaTexture.

For example `cogl_texture_2d_sliced_new_with_size()` can be used to create a meta texture that may slice a large image into multiple, smaller power-of-two sized textures. These high level textures are not directly understood by a GPU and so this API must be used to manually resolve the underlying textures for drawing.

All high level textures (CoglAtlasTexture, CoglSubTexture, CoglTexturePixmapX11, and CoglTexture2DSliced) can be handled consistently using this interface which greately simplifies implementing primitives that support all texture types.

For example if you use the `cogl_rectangle()` API then Cogl will internally use this API to resolve the low level textures of any meta textures you have associated with CoglPipeline layers.

### Note

The low level drawing APIs such as `cogl_draw_attributes()` don't understand the CoglMetaTexture interface and so it is your responsibility to use this API to resolve all CoglPipeline textures into low-level textures before drawing.

For each low-level texture that makes up part of the given region of the `meta_texture`, `callback` is called specifying how the low-level texture maps to the original region.

`meta_texture` : | An object implementing the CoglMetaTexture interface.
`tx_1` : | The top-left x coordinate of the region to iterate
`ty_1` : | The top-left y coordinate of the region to iterate
`tx_2` : | The bottom-right x coordinate of the region to iterate
`ty_2` : | The bottom-right y coordinate of the region to iterate
`wrap_x` : | The wrap mode for the x-axis
`wrap_y` : | The wrap mode for the y-axis
`callback` : | A CoglMetaTextureCallback pointer to be called for each low-level texture within the specified region.
`user_data` : | A private pointer that is passed to `callback`.

Since 1.10

Stability Level: Unstable