Overview

The Processing Development Environment (PDE) makes it easy to write Processing programs. Programs are written in the Text Editor and started by pressing the Run button. In Processing, a computer program is called a sketch. Sketches are stored in the Sketchbook, which is a folder on your computer.

Sketches can draw two- and three-dimensional graphics. The default renderer is for drawing two-dimensional graphics. The P3D renderer makes it possible to draw three-dimensional graphics, which includes controlling the camera, lighting, and materials. The P2D renderer is a fast, but less accurate renderer for drawing two-dimensional graphics. Both the P2D and P3D renderers are accelerated if your computer has an OpenGL compatible graphics card.

The capabilities of Processing are extended with Libraries and Tools. Libraries make it possible for sketches to do things beyond the core Processing code. There are hundreds of libraries contributed by the Processing community that can be added to your sketches to enable new things like playing sounds, doing computer vision, and working with advanced 3D geometry. Tools extend the PDE to help make creating sketches easier by providing interfaces for tasks like selecting colors.

Processing has different programming modes to make it possible to deploy sketches on different platforms and program in different ways. The Java mode is the default. Other programming modes may be downloaded by selecting "Add Mode..." from the menu in the upper-right corner of the PDE.

Processing Development Environment (PDE)

The Processing Development Environment (PDE) consists of a simple text editor for writing code, a message area, a text console, tabs for managing files, a toolbar with buttons for common actions, and a series of menus. The menu options change from mode to mode. The default Java mode is documented here.