Skia: an open source 2D graphics library • Hacker News Board

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#61

Post by gatmne » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 5:08 AM UTC

j_s wrote: post #43

throwaway2016a wrote: post #5

For anyone thinking of skipping looking at this one. I was not interested either until I read this part: > It serves as the graphics engine for Google Chrome and Chrome OS, Android, Mozilla Firefox and Firefox OS, and many other products.

Similar situation to the freetype/harfbuzz all-but-Microsoft/Apple (open source) monoculture. I'm interested to understand more about how some categories of software libraries don't foster multiple strong open source alternatives, while others do.

I was thinking about this recently. I think this type of consolidation starts to make sense if you think of software as mathematics. A formula gets devised, iterated upon and refined, adopted, and then finally built upon.

It makes more sense to adapt a standard formula to a given use case than it is to derive a custom formula from the ground up. I suspect the reason why its not the case for software is because of copyright and IP laws.

Likewise, I expect mathematics wouldn't have advanced as much as it has had there been IP laws enacted for mathematics. People would too limited by the licensing terms for their Leibniz™ and Euler™ formulas to be able to be able to build the next step.

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#62

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

megaman22 wrote: post #21

percentcer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a little 2d game that I'd like to port over to Skia. What did you end up using to handle input and audio and other gamey things?

I would think SDL would be an easy cross-platform choice there.

[deleted]

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#63

Post by on_and_off » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 5:12 AM UTC

cheez wrote: post #38

alkonaut wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understod correctly (which isn’t certain) Skia is also the rendering backend for chromium. Chromium is used as the rendering bits for electron. Electron is how you make these apps on “web engines”. So all those editors based on web engines likely render through Skia...

I believe Skia was originally used in Android as well.

Isn't it still the case ?

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#64

Post by gaze » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 5:39 AM UTC

tony wrote: post #42

Aseprite switched to Skia a year or so ago ( https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite ). Regret it. Google doesn't care to maintain CMake support for it, so there goes pulling it in via source and building as a library dependency. https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/issues/1598#issuecommen... You may ask, "why don't you just write your own CMake module like everyone else?" I've tried. I think the build system changed a…

It's true. Google has essentially made it as painful as possible to use Skia outside of the google ecosystem. The build system is what's mostly kept me from using it in personal projects.

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#65

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 5:54 AM UTC

PeCaN wrote: post #7

stevemk14ebr wrote: post #2

C++ 11, nice. Does anyone use this? And if you do how does it compare to alternatives

Skia is probably the most popular 2D graphics library at the moment. I don't really know why this got on HN now. It's already extremely popular. I use it in a little WIP game engine. It's very pleasant, excellent little library. There's an online jsfiddle-esque demo here https://fiddle.skia.org/ if you want to try it out.

Been one feet in the gamedev space for pretty much my whole teenage and adult life, and it's the first time I've heard about it. It might be me just not paying attention, or maybe it's not that popular for end-users.

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#66

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 6:05 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #22

voltagex_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone used this? Are there any examples?

I’m converting a large desktop (CAD) app from GDI+ to SkiaSharp at the moment. Really liking the Api and the quality of the C# wrapper. Also maps very well to GDI concepts so a conversion is fairly painless.

Cool, how does it compare to Win2D?

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#67

Post by NiLSPACE » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 6:35 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #47

chrismorgan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebRender is not even enabled by default in Nightly yet. It’ll still be a while before it’s ready for production—definitely not Firefox 59. I don’t know of any schedule, but I haven’t been following it much either. But yes, the Quantum Render project is all about making WebRender Firefox’s primary graphics backend.

Somehow I remember it was supposed to be Firefox 59, not sure where I saw it now. Of course it can slip if it's not ready.

I believe the target was Firefox 59, but they didn't make it.

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#68

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 7:16 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #66

alkonaut wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m converting a large desktop (CAD) app from GDI+ to SkiaSharp at the moment. Really liking the Api and the quality of the C# wrapper. Also maps very well to GDI concepts so a conversion is fairly painless.

Cool, how does it compare to Win2D?

It’s just a lot less ”different”. Performance is pretty similar across all frameworks, and is much more dependent on call patterns than anything else.

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#69

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

needusername2 wrote: post #32

alkonaut wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m converting a large desktop (CAD) app from GDI+ to SkiaSharp at the moment. Really liking the Api and the quality of the C# wrapper. Also maps very well to GDI concepts so a conversion is fairly painless.

Why are you converting to SkiaSharp, if I may ask? Is it for performance or multiplatform reasons?

See my answer on the other msg

Re: Skia: an open source 2D graphics library

#70

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Jan 15, 2018, 7:24 AM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #27

alkonaut wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m converting a large desktop (CAD) app from GDI+ to SkiaSharp at the moment. Really liking the Api and the quality of the C# wrapper. Also maps very well to GDI concepts so a conversion is fairly painless.

Cool. Are you able to share any more details? I'm guessing this isn't a standard WinForms app. What advantages does moving away from GDI+ give you?

It’s a winforms app, and there isn’t much nonstandard about it other than that large performance sensitive drawing apps are perhaps quite nonstandard to begin with. We want to handle some large cad scenarios in it (e.g smooth pan/zoom in drawings with 500k lines), it’s not the default use case, but it happens. The main advandtage over gdi+ ) is better support for retained mode drawing (record/playback style drawing), more efficient automatic culling, etc.