It's a pain in the ass sure, but it's no showstopper. We've all been writing (and continue to write) raster based graphical UIs forever, vector based primitive graphics libraries are a relatively new concept in most Windows programming -- in .NET hardware accelerated vector graphics have only been natively available relatively recently through WPF in .NET 3.
The fact the Android needs to support hardware that doesn't feature any of the three components he described as necessary: high res screen, fast CPU, and a GPU should provide a clue as to why they started with raster graphics. > "now no one will ever write another GUI which uses raster graphics." Ha! I wish! Raster graphics-based GUI development is still very much a part of must GUI developers day-to-day. Vector is surely the way of the future but sadly raster is still here for a while. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see vector graphics support in Android--tomorrow if possible--but any decent GUI developer should be able to create compelling and intuitive UI using the raster toolkit and OpenGL libraries available now. Cheers Reto On 4 Jul, 12:22, stefoid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > etc... > > this quote from this blog says it clearly. the lack of hardware > acceleration for androids 2D graphics API, oand for any resolution > independent way of defining your UI is a showstopper. > > http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/five-problems-wi... > > "Third, Android's graphics framework uses pixel coordinates and > immediate-mode 2D drawing. > > Now this is just a mistake. I was looking at the doc and I could have > sworn that someone had mischievously linked me to the Xlib manpages. > WTF, guys? Is there a timewarp in Mountain View I don't know about? I > know you're on the old SGI campus, but really... > > The idea that, in 2007, anyone is writing 2D UIs with pixel drawing > functions just burns me up. The right way to draw a UI is to construct > a vector data structure, a la SVG or whatever, that represents the > visual state of the screen in resolution-independent coordinates, and > then just render the fscker. No, you don't have to actually construct > an SVG text file. You even have a GL library in there! You can just > treat 2D as a special case of 3D! People! > > This is not just an esoteric developer issue. It has real usability > ramifications. > > I don't know anything about the iPhone's software stack, but I'm > pretty sure it uses Quartz, in which all coordinates are device- > independent. But I didn't even need to know this. The whole UI just > screams "vector." As soon as I saw the demos, my first thought was > "now no one will ever write another GUI which uses raster graphics." > Little did I know that down in Mountain View, a crack team of hotshot > Googlers was busy recreating the Athena toolkit. > > With a lot of work, with good layout and compositing and so forth, it > is possible to make a raster UI look pretty good. The Android UIs look > pretty good. But they don't look anywhere near as slick as the iPhone. > When you don't isolate device coordinates completely from the > programmer, they leak everywhere. You are constantly deciding whether > that line is 1 pixel or 2 pixels thick. And your designers curse you > all day long. > > You do need a couple of things to build a pure vector UI. You need a > high-resolution screen, a fast CPU, and hopefully some kind of GPU. > But - as the iPhone proves - all of these are available in products > shipping today. There is simply no excuse for creating a new platform > in which applications are not isolated from device-dependent screen > coordinates. > " --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Announcing the new M5 SDK! http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2008/02/android-sdk-m5-rc14-now-available.html For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
