I see many people have problems with the new Direct2D drawing engine in Xojo 2016r4+ and I’m one of these, so I created a feedback case for a feature request to implement Direct2D as an option the developer can choose like was before for GDI/GDI+.
Everyone interested on that can share his thoughts here: <https://xojo.com/issue/48972>
That simply cannot happen- we now rely on modern drawing being consistently available across all platforms- that means no more GDI/GDI+ and allows us to move forward with our modernization efforts across each platform and even share techniques where it wasn’t possible before.
But please don’t hesitate to file a case with an example project about any specific performance issue (particularly if you have an example that shows drawing itself being slower- even on a machine without a nice GPU) so we can look into it.
Travis, I do understand what you say about relying on modern drawing. Still I have to note for the printing system a such fallback mechanism was implemented.
And please try to understand this suddenly broke all our applications (50+) without any chance to have a smooth transition. I can’t say it’s not usable anymore, but still a big step back.
I will try to provide some example showing the problem, but please consider the time and efforts to provide a such feedback. We have our milestones and time already planned for delivery to our cudtomers. As you rely on modern drawing, we need to rely on a stable and reliable development system that doesn’t suddenly break due to a unexpected change of core technology.
[quote=343509:@Massimo Valle]Still I have to note for the printing system a such fallback mechanism was implemented.
[/quote]
There isn’t any such fallback
Certainly not in Xojo’s framework
StyledTextPrinter may but that is the OS doing it - not our framework.
Can you keep your production dev on an older version? Using bleeding edge Xojo is not recommended for production apps.
(Edit: in my opinion.)
This is why I continue the development of an application with 2016R3. Since I have some scrolling controls I see these performing worse than with GDI/GDI+. (W10) But one day, I have to leave this version behind since I agree to the R&D team that we have to go with the innovative flow.
Our biggest issue is that Texts (Graphics.DrawString) looks totally unacceptable with the current Direct2D/DirectWrite implementation. On HiDPI it’s great - but on “non HiDPI Displays” - a big step backwards.
While Xojo certainly doesn’t get back to GDI, I hope that maybe this might be worth looking at: <https://xojo.com/issue/51337>
I wonder if a different DirectWrite Rendering Mode would improve at least some aspects…?