Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> ...and this is the reason why. Almost *no* languages have the capability
> to easily draw graphics these days.
>
> (Back when I was a kid, you could just say "plot 4, 7" and it would draw
> a dot there. Ah, I had no idea how good I had it!)

How about C# in a .NET environment? Just have the wizard create a program
template for you, code your custon OnDraw() handler, and hey presto! There you
go.

Okay, it's not "plot 4, 7" but "gr.draw(...);", so a few characters more, but
nothing conceptually challenging. Except that there's no "plot", so you have to
draw small circles or boxes to produce a dot.


But I remember, back in the days when I was learning C, I had similar problems -
all the more since I didn't have the slightest clue about programming for
Windows GUI nor X-Window (I could have gotten access to both at the institute).
But I desperately wanted to code a Quake level mapper, and *needed* some good
graphics output.

Fortunately I happened to know a bit of PostScript coding then, so I ended up
using the laser printers for graphics output :) (Later I also used GhostScript
in order to not waste too much paper, but of course it never came close to the
quality of the A3 laser prints...)


> > And you should forget
> > trying to program with the Windows API directly, unless you have *tons* of
> > experience with it, or you want to die prematurely.
>
> This made me actually laugh out loud. For real. Such a glowing
> recommendation of the Win32 API! :-D

Seen it once. I guess it's not *too* difficult for an *experienced* programmer
to get into it, but fortunately there's no need to: Virtually all mainstream
programming languages come with a framework that is *way* easier to use.

The main problem with the Windows API is that it's C, and doesn't actually lend
itself to being driven by C++ programs, plus there's a lot of "bureaucratic"
overhead involved, which begs to be handled by a framework instead of the
application developer.

> (OTOH, I understand that the raw X Windows bindings are even harder...
> apparently... I guess that's why there's so many toolkits!)

I've never seen the X APIs, but I imagine they're probably the same level of
complexity as the Microsoft APIs.

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