10. Text & Graphics
Okay, I’m going to tell you this right up front: When it comes to graphics, you can’t do anything too tricky using Win8 XAML. There are no pixel shaders or layout transforms, and text display is pretty much limited to setting basic typeface properties. That isn’t to say that you can’t do those things in Win8, just not in XAML.
As you probably know, WinRT graphics rendering is built on DirectX, not the older (and slower) GDI. You can write DirectX Win8 applications in C++, and there is some interoperability between DirectX and XAML via the SurfaceImageSource, SwapChainBackgroundPanel and related classes. The Windows.UI.Text namespace provides pretty complete support for OpenType typography.
Or so I’m told. I’ve never had any ...
Get Fluent Windows® 8.1 App Development now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
