Chapter 7

Well-Rendered Miscellany

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

—Albert Einstein

When starting this chapter, I tried to find a suitable quote about miscellany. Unfortunately, all I could find were collections of miscellaneous quotes. But the one by Albert Einstein is a real gem and can almost apply because you, dear reader, are conducting research—research in how to make richer, more involving, and fun software.

In books like this, sometimes it's hard to make clean classifications of a particular topic, and we just have to dump a lot things into a single chapter when they might not warrant a chapter of their own. So, here I'm going to cover some classic presentation and rendering tricks, whether they can be applied to the solar-system project or, so at the end you'll exclaim “So, that's how they do that!”