Graphics Library for D

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad" <ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at gmail.com>]

On Tuesday, 7 January 2014 at 19:00:46 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> You seem very concerned that the low-level API will effect the 
> design of the high-level API. If that happens we've failed and 
> need to try again.

No, I am afraid that you pick a high-level ENGINE (not HAL API) 
and dress it up. If you actually use a low level api, it will be 
shader based and use roughly the same pipeline. DX3D and GL have 
feature parity if you stay away from the esoteric stuff.

> I asked Mike Parker about this at Dconf 2013, with the intent 
> of having a reference implementation. You know what he said? 
> Don't bother. Because in the end it does not matter which 
> implementation you start with, other API's will look different 
> no matter what you do, even for OGL (differing 
> implementations), differing fonts, differing rendering 
> pipelines, etc...

No. Simple shaders work roughly the same on modern hardware, 
though you need performance tweaks, avoid accumulated FP errors 
etc. If you don't depend on system fonts, fonts should not differ.

> His advice was to pick whatever worked best for the implementor 
> and make the other API implementations look as close a possible 
> and have people submit bug reports.

I am arguing in favour of having one reference implementation 
that is highly portable. There is no need to match up pixels to 
anything if there is only one solution…