so we want some new gui-features, a timeline, high-quality 2d-text-rendering, antialiased 2d-shape rendering.

i am not willing to invest efforts into the current gui based on a buggy proprietary activex control. and while rewriting the gui i would like to make it cross platform, because longterm vista is bad. same applies to writing a timeline. writing a gui for windows only at this point is a dead-end.

so for both the patch and the timeline gui we need a new crossplatform drawing backend that besides should also help us improve quality of rendering 2d-text-shape textures (currently done via gdi).

rendering

after some research it seems to me, that we face 2 alternatives:

Cairo

http://www.cairographics.org

• seems it can be opengl-accelerated via glitz but else is slower according to a random posting.
• is the drawing backend for the GnomeDesktop and therefore has maybe a broader developer base
• highlevel api (somehow like gdi+)

AntiGrain Geometry

http://www.antigrain.com

• seems to actively developed mainly by one boy
• seems to be more lightwight "library" rather than a full-featured api, very lowlevel and exciting
• has been translated to object pascal for use in delphi and freepascal
• especially concentrates on high-quality, antialiased, subpixel-precise rendering

windowing

for crossplatform gui-development we should also chose a windowing system that keeps us from dealing with most platform-related-issues. here i would suggest:

wxWidgets

http://www.wxwidgets.org

• has native-platform-look on all different platforms
• has been under active developement since years

language

here i'd say we face 3 realistic alternatives:

freepascal

mono/.net (delphi or c#)

c++

since we'd probably still like gui and kernel to be written in the same language and supposed mono/.net fails the performance-test for a kernel and freepascal seems just too widely unused i also see a clear favourite here.

good nite.