Graphics Library for D

[Justin Whear]

On Sun, 05 Jan 2014 20:10:06 -0800, Adam Wilson wrote:
 
> 
> If you are interested in helping with a Cinder like library for D and/or
> have code you'd like to contribute, let's start talking and see what
> happens.

I've been writing graphical applications using D and OpenGL on Linux for 
a few years now in my spare time, so I'd like to help out.  Just last 
week I googled "alternatives to Cinder" looking a library that had C 
bindings so that I could use it from D.

> 
> The logical phases as I can see them are as follows, but please suggest
> changes:
> 
> - Windowing and System Interaction (Including Keyboard/Mouse/Touch
> Input) - Basic Drawing (2D Shapes, Lines, Gradients, etc)
> - Image Rendering (Image Loading, Rendering, Modification, Saving, etc.)
> - 3D Drawing (By far the most complex stage, so we'll leave it for last)

If the ultimate goal is a high-level, idiomatic D library for people who 
are not necessarily experienced in CG, then shouldn't we start with the 
high-level interface and work down?  That way the end-result drives the 
design and not the other way around.  I understand that to be accepted 
into Phobos someday this library will need a minimal set of system 
dependencies, but in the short term it may be wise to simply wrap 
existing libraries like GLFW3 for low-level systems like windowing.  In 
my experience, successful products deliver the vision to the customers as 
quickly as possible, allowing the design to be refined.  Replacing low-
level components with native D implementations should be invisible to the 
end-users anyways, making them the most non-essential.

I'd also second the suggestion to build everything on top of OpenGL and 
DirectX--virtually every device that has an interactive display these 
days has hardware acceleration in some form.