Aurora Graphics Library Initial Design Discussion

[Tofu Ninja]

On Sunday, 19 January 2014 at 03:38:30 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
>...
>
> The choice that I would like to clarify is that Aurora will be 
> a retained mode API. I understand that this is not the best 
> choice for speed and that not everyone will be happy with this 
> choice. However, retained mode API's are typically much 
> higher-level, which will make it easier for developers that are 
> unfamiliar with writing graphics code to express their intent. 
> Given the stated goal of Aurora I feel that this is the best 
> choice.
>
>...

I am not sure why you feel the need to be one way or the other, 
why can't aurora support both retained and immediate mode style 
graphics. From what I can tell, all of the proposed back ends 
will be immediate mode, so why not just first build nice 
immediate mode api over the back ends and then build the retained 
mode on top of that? Both can be exposed to the end user as 
different ways to get the same thing done. One is not better(or 
easier) than the other, just suited for different things.