Re: GdkGraphics extending Graphics2D?

[Thomas Fitzsimmons]

On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 17:46 +0100, Sven de Marothy wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Currently we have a Cairo-based Graphics2D peer and a GTK-based Graphics
>peer. 
>
>The way I understand it, the plan is to throw out GtkGraphics completely
>and make the Cairo-based Graphics2D peer the default as soon as Cairo
>becomes integrated into GNOME, which is scheduled for this year.
>
>The way I see it, just adding stub methods might cause more problems
>than it solves. Whereas implementing them would be a waste of effort
>which could be better spent on improving the Cairo peer instead. 
>(And the Java2D support in general)
>
>It's not quite as simple as just adding the missing methods either.
>Java2D is basically a completely different thing, which Sun rather
>klugily grafted onto the existing API. So it's not just a question of
>missing methods but a rather different architecture. The GtkGraphics
>implementation can get away with doing nasty things internally like cast
>Image to GtkImage. It does quite a lot of nastiness like that, since the
>original Java 1.0/1.1 model is much more abstract. This won't work with
>Java2D which has BufferedImage, and so on. 
>
>So, IMHO, trying to turn the Graphics peer into Graphics2D will just add
>to the kluginess. Better to do the proper thing and throw it out as soon
>as it's practical to do so, and put our effort into Graphics2D and
>Cairo.
>

Very well said.

Tom