Anti-Aliasing Support

[ChrisJG]

Hi there,

Is there any anti-aliasing support for primative shapes, such as circle and lines?

Many thanks

[inmarket]

Not presently. Anti-aliasing requires being able to read back from the display surface and adds significant complexity to the algorithms particularly if you want to do it using integer mathematics.

Many display controllers simply don't provide read back access to the display surface. We fudge it for fonts by assuming a constant background colour or, if we can't do that, we simply ignore anti-aliasing on the anti-aliasing font. This strategy is unlikely to be useful for basic shapes as the whole point of anti-aliasing is to mix the edges of the shape with the background.

Similarly the additional complexity (read that as code size, stack space requirements, and speed) is not worth it for most embedded platforms. In uGFX we have very well optimised image handling and with the right image this can replace most needs for anti-aliasing shapes.

Having said all that, we are adding the technology basis in V3 to allow these operations in future if the programmer and hardware designer are prepared to meet the requirements and are prepared to accept the speed and code overheads of these routines.

[ChrisJG]

Thanks for your response.

Does this mean that uGFX always writes directly to the display, instead of a buffer first?

Do you have a best guess date when you hope to release V3?

Edited May 9, 2018 by ChrisJG

[inmarket]

1. Yes. Most micros don't have enough RAM for a framebuffer so uGFX (unlike most graphics libraries) doesn't require one. Three are a couple of exceptions - when the display controller requires one, and where the controller is not pixel addressable (eg sub 8 bits per pixel).

2. V3 is a work in progress that is taking much longer than originally intended due to there being more work involved than we expected and we have had fewer resources to devote to it than we expected. We were hoping it would have been out by now but it isn't, and so I am now reluctant to put time frames on it. Hopefully soon (read that as months not weeks).

[Joel Bodenmann]

Regarding 1: Keep in mind that µGFX can still optionally run off one or more buffers. We have a lot of applications that use either hardware level double buffering or application level double buffering. We also have a lot of applications that use our dynamic arbitrary sized framebuffers called pixmaps.

[ChrisJG]

Many thanks for your replies. Very impressed with how active and responsive you guys are.

We are currently shortlisting Embedded GUI tools and impressed with yours so far.

[Joel Bodenmann]

Happy yo Help & Very glad to hear that :)