[webkit-dev] KWQ Graphics code on Windows

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Jan 19, 2006, at 6:54 PM, Kevin Ollivier wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> On Jan 16, 2006, at 3:52 PM, David Hyatt wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> I would guess that Cairo requires gdiplus.dll.
>>
>> I think GDI+ is what we should go with initially.  Cairo might be  
>> interesting as a way to do SVG eventually, but for now I think we  
>> should not define SVG_SUPPORT and basically not worry about SVG.   
>> The initial goal should be the bring-up of the HTML rendering  
>> portion (SVG can come much later), and I don't think Cairo really  
>> provides much of any benefit for that (although I'd be happy to be  
>> proven wrong).
>
> Also, the wxWidgets library's drawing classes (wx*DC) are another  
> solution to this that is cross-platform. (wxArt2D is a add-on  
> library that has SVG support too.) The "con" of course is the added  
> dependency, but the pluses are that:

Does wxWidgets drawing support transparency and compositing efficiently?

>
> 1) cross-platform, so more bang for the buck
> 2) share the support burden (wxWidgets developers will improve/test  
> the graphics APIs as well, meaning less changes you need to make)
> 3) pre-packaged workarounds for a lot of Win bugs, and GTK too. ;-)
>
> Apps like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org took the approach of writing  
> their own "cross-platform" toolkit APIs, with an implementation for  
> each platform, and sooner or later support for each platform got  
> out of sync, usually with the Mac being on the receiving end of the  
> neglect. As someone who tried very, very hard to get Mozilla's  
> embedding engine to run properly on Mac, I can tell you that the  
> Mac guts were very out of date and very tied into the Mozilla  
> application. I looked at OOo long enough to know making it work on  
> Mac would be such a challenge that it needed far more than a couple  
> of people with a lot of dedication. It's not even known when  
> NeoOffice will run on the Intel Macs...
>
> Just my $0.02 but I've found that unless support for other  
> platforms is absolutely critical (and thus you can be assured that  
> ample resources will be devoted to it), the best solution is the  
> one that reduces maintenance, and maximizes developer support, as  
> much as possible. A wxWidgets port has already been started,  
> actually (see http://developer.berlios.de/svn/?group_id=3786), and  
> I'd definitely be happy to help out.

I don't think we want to move away from CG on the Mac. As far as  
drawing code, I would want to see some evidence that it has the  
performance and graphical capabilities to support a modern browser.  
Does it do compositing and double buffering for instance?

Regards,
Maciej