Some think it is perfectly normal and easy to develop entirely on Mac, and simply compile for Windows to sell.
Well, it is not quite as simple.
I just found out that the Mac executables print is Alpha channel aware, but not the Windows print. Which means one can have a very printing of pictures on Mac, and a dreadful result on PC with all alpha rendered as pitch black.
Solution is to print to a picture and then print that picture to the printer, but that is yet another difference between platforms that needs to be addressed.
Also, on Mac, opening an image is rotation-aware, but on Windows not… the height and width properties come in the wrong way round.
(I’ve worked around the transparency issue by creating a white image of the same size, and .drawpicture onto that.
I needed to use MBS plugins to check the correct shape for a rotated image.)
I think Apple added rotation awareness in macOS 10.6 and so we just get it without Xojo Inc. or us doing something.
For Windows, Xojo uses libraries which don’t give it for free.
Fun fact: if you try to open an image in your app built pre-Direct2D and the rotation flag is set to an invalid value, it will cause your app to hard crash. You can’t catch it, you can’t correct it, and Xojo won’t fix it because it’s an old framework thing…
My definition of “fun” and your’s seem to differ… What you describe fits better with my definition of “issue”. But if I read your post correctly, your “fun fact” and my “issue” may be very close relatives.
You seem to be very confident with this assumption. You may be right, but I will not bet any real money on it. I read in several threads that the classic framework is here to stay for quite a while. I would only assume (yes, I do that too) that it will remain properly supported while it is alive.
edit: I removed the superfluous “i” in the first quote, that I did not see at first.
Edit #2: fixed some of my poor English syntax and my indecision between “is going to” and “will”. Ended up with will. Hopefully, I chose the correct English formulation. Not always an easy thing…
So this one is about the “Graphics Framework (on Windows)” which is being used by Xojo, not the “Xojo (Language) Framework”, right?
Then it’s somehow not that unexpected that we won’t see a Xojo 2016r3.1 with fixes for GDI, GDI+ (even though many would love to see that), as they have moved the graphics framework to Direct2D on Windows.
That workaround would not suffice in the situation.
It was just a note to be aware of, it’s long past needing a fix at this point since Direct2D finally handles custom fonts (but thanks for the help, everyone!)
What you describe fits better with my definition of “issue”. But if I read your post correctly, your “fun fact” and my “issue” may be very close relatives. 