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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE4: Arthur (and?/)or libart2? or kcanvas?
From:       Nikolas Zimmermann <zimmermann () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-06-04 15:40:49
Message-ID: 200506041740.49804.zimmermann () kde ! org
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On Saturday 04 June 2005 11:34, Melchior FRANZ wrote:
> Is there an 'official' policy w.r.t. rendering engines in KDE4? I think
> about porting my kdeartwork-screensaver to KDE4. Currently it uses libart2
> for rendering. It would be nice if I could drop this dependency and use
> Arthur. But according to the Qt4 documentation, Arthur does anti-aliasing
> only if there's OpenGl available, which would be a noticeable degradation.
> Or will kcanvas serve as a layer in between, that uses Arthur if possible,
> and libagg2/libart2 otherwise. Or is all that not decided yet?  :-)

Hi Melchior,

there is no unique answer to that question, as it really depends on your need.
For KCanvas I can promise you a Qt4 backend (beside the agg2 backend).
libart will never ever be used in KDE again - at least KDE won't depend on it
anymore, as it s * u * c * k * s :-).

Though only use KCanvas if you really need advanced features, like the
general support of "paintservers". ie. define a KRenderingPaintServerGradient,
and reuse it to draw ie. 3 different paths - stuff like that (needed for svg.)

If you want to have sth. like "QPainter p; p.setBrush(Qt::red); p.drawRect(.."
you will be better of with Qt4's QPainter as it does not force you to use
such a "complex API" like KCanvas offers. Projects like 'Kast', 'KDVDStudio'
already use KCanvas (not to forget: ksvg2 too :-) because they explictitely
want/need such an advanced API.... so it really depends on you..

The icon engine must probably use agg2 in KDE4, as we do have to have
(fast) anti-aliasing in any case; maybe we should use Qt4 only if AA is
available. This is something still undecided, and I don't want to decide until
I really tried Arthur as KCanvas backend, so I can see how it "performs" with
real-life SVG content. Stay tuned - watch my blog :-)

Bye
 Bye
  Niko
 
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