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use ;
use fmt;
// @short_description: Describe vertex indices stored in a #IndexBuffer.
//
// Indices allow you to avoid duplicating vertices in your vertex data
// by virtualizing your data and instead providing a sequence of index
// values that tell the GPU which data should be used for each vertex.
//
// If the GPU is given a sequence of indices it doesn't simply walk
// through each vertex of your data in order it will instead walk
// through the indices which can provide random access to the
// underlying data.
//
// Since it's very common to have duplicate vertices when describing a
// shape as a list of triangles it can often be a significant space
// saving to describe geometry using indices. Reducing the size of
// your models can make it cheaper to map them into the GPU by
// reducing the demand on memory bandwidth and may help to make better
// use of your GPUs internal vertex caching.
//
// For example, to describe a quadrilateral as 2 triangles for the GPU
// you could either provide data with 6 vertices or instead with
// indices you can provide vertex data for just 4 vertices and an
// index buffer that specfies the 6 vertices by indexing the shared
// vertices multiple times.
//
// |[
// Vertex2f quad_vertices[] = {
// {x0, y0}, //0 = top left
// {x1, y1}, //1 = bottom left
// {x2, y2}, //2 = bottom right
// {x3, y3}, //3 = top right
// };
// //tell the gpu how to interpret the quad as 2 triangles...
// unsigned char indices[] = {0, 1, 2, 0, 2, 3};
// ]|
//
// Even in the above illustration we see a saving of 10bytes for one
// quad compared to having data for 6 vertices and no indices but if
// you need to draw 100s or 1000s of quads then its really quite
// significant.
//
// Something else to consider is that often indices can be defined
// once and remain static while the vertex data may change for
// animations perhaps. That means you may be able to ignore the
// negligable cost of mapping your indices into the GPU if they don't
// ever change.
//
// The above illustration is actually a good example of static indices
// because it's really common that developers have quad mesh data that
// they need to display and we know exactly what that indices array
// needs to look like depending on the number of quads that need to be
// drawn. It doesn't matter how the quads might be animated and
// changed the indices will remain the same. even has a utility
// (get_rectangle_indices()) to get access to re-useable indices
// for drawing quads as above.