[ANN] Rebol/AGG

Hi all on the list, I'd like to announce the first official public release of AGG-lite based library for Rebol/View/Pro or Rebol/SDK. You can download the experimental version(Windows only for now) for free from the following link: http://www.rebol.cz/~cyphre/cgi-bin/agg.cgi looking forward to your comments! Regards, Cyphre

Hello Cyphre, That's impressive! I have a small question though: what is AGG? -- Best regards, Patrick

Hi Cyphre, AGG: do you mean the "rule based visual language supporting an algebraic approach to graph transformation" as defined on http://tfs.cs.tu-berlin.de/agg/ ? ==christophe

Sorry guys, I was in a big hurry when I write the announcement so I'll try to write a bit more about the stuff. AGG means for "Antigrain Geometry" which is a free project of Maxim Shemanarev (http://www.antigrain.com). Basically it is a grphical api for rendering high quality 2D graphics output with subpixel accuracy and anti-aliasing (there is lot of other very nice features, just check the AGG site) I used Maxim's parts of code and made dynamic library for use with Rebol/View/Pro and Rebol/Sdk (as those products have library interface available). As a first step I wanted to "simulate" with AGG the same functionality as Rebol built-in DRAW dialect offers but with better quality(antialiasing) and alphachannel access and possibility to draw ellipses. So the first release you can download should work like "better DRAW". In the zip archive you can find: - the library(agg_lite.dll) -Rebol wrapper script with all the API functions for the library including DRAW dialect emulator (agg-lite.r) -Windows support framework(agg-win.r) for using direct GDI blitting on the View window so you are independent on the Rebol compositing engine and it's blitting routines(can be faster on some computers and in some cases) -few examples which shows you different aplication replacement/usage/measurements of AGG(it is very simple to switch your DRAW based script to using the AGG graphics as the "DRAW dialect emulator" is able to use the DRAW dialect syntax for AGG rendering on-the-fly! Just check the agg-paint.r example and you can see how easily was to switch Frank Sievertsen's code to be able to use AGG instead of DRAW) ....and what's next? I'd like to enhance the library for lot of stuff like: fast image trasformations, splines, vector gradients, vector text rendering, interpolators, strokes and others. so the package could beat current Flash gfx engine without problems ;-) if you have any questions just let me know... Regards, Cyphre

> Hi Cyphre, > > AGG: do you mean the "rule based visual language supporting an algebraic

Cyphre,

> looking forward to your comments!

Hello Cyphre, Tuesday, June 22, 2004, 3:50:53 PM, you wrote: C> ...and what's next? I'd like to enhance the library for lot of stuff like: C> fast image trasformations, splines, vector gradients, vector text rendering, C> interpolators, strokes and others. so the package could beat current Flash C> gfx engine without problems ;-) First of all I would like to say that I very appreciate your work (and it's more important to see some progress in these times when it looks that Carl is more working on his farm brewing his own beer and vine than working on Rebol) but I can't help myself and must say that you cannot beat Flash without Carl's help. For animations your agg-draw is still pretty slow (but great for static rendering). I did this Rebol/Flash script in 10 minutes to show you, that Flash is still much more faster in animations: http://oldes.multimedia.cz/test/lion.html Next thing is, that it requires Rebol license to run your script so you cannot use it as a plugin (which is still available only for M$!( And I really don't like encaped scripts as other people cannot see the source to learn something new - encaping kills the rebolution. And last thing: you should list that the AGG DLL is not your work - in your zip file there is no message that it's originally Maxim's work (and I'm sure he will not like it!) And as his project is free, I think that you could provide your modified DLL source as well. I know that you are now on holiday so enjoy, I'm looking forward to seeing you again to discuss your work:) Oldes -- Best regards, rebOldes -----------------[ http://oldes.multimedia.cz/ ]

rebOldes wrote:

>Hello Cyphre, >Tuesday, June 22, 2004, 3:50:53 PM, you wrote: >still much more faster in animations: >http://oldes.multimedia.cz/test/lion.html

> >First of all I would like to say that I very appreciate your work (and > >it's more important to see some progress in these times when it looks > What Cyphre did was just example to show the potential ... > -pekr-

Hello Petr, Friday, June 25, 2004, 7:42:37 AM, you wrote: PK> rebOldes wrote:

>>Hello Cyphre, >> >> >>

The cairo is a very impressive drawing toolkit as well... image magick is still 100% free and commercially re-distributable... it could be a nice addition to rebol view... what I've seen of it is LIGHTNING fast...

Maxim Olivier-Adlhoch napsal(a):

>The cairo is a very impressive drawing toolkit as well... > >image magick is still 100% free and commercially re-distributable... >

Hi Petr, Sorry, I'm not on AltME that much could someone post this mail for me !? I just don't have time to stick around and chat... its ssooooo time consuming... btw, reading chat session when you're not in the room is painless and pointless... that is why e-mail is still better for me. (sorry for bringing that up again, please ppl, dont reply to this, we all know how everyone feels about the pros and cons of e-mail ;-) The reason I see why RT could outsource the GFX stuff to an external , open source, team of developpers is that it allows RT to use a bigger body of developpers. If RT then ADDS stuff to it to make it more usefull within the rebol view software (like the event mechanism and the whole nested layout structure, which is very handy and well done) then they DO differentiate themselves. I'm not saying AGG is bad, I'm letting that to others to determine, currently I have enough things to shake a stick at... I do know that image magick is VERY fast and can process at up to 128 bits per channel. So it could be nice if people are thinking about adding professional image manipulations. about the links: CAIRO This toolkit is mainly concerned with vector graphics and is built atop a flexible retargetable output system. they already have an opengl, postcript, raw image and png output, but are also working on svg and pdf. who knows, maybe its built over AGG, I just don't have a lot of time to do a lot of research right now. http://cairographics.org/ IMAGE MAGICK: http://www.imagemagick.org supports so many image formats: http://www.imagemagick.org/www/formats.html a few image manipulations: http://www.imagemagick.org/images/examples.jpg even the command-line tool is impressive, This is a good page showing MANY things image magick does straight out of the box http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/graphics/imagick6/ license DOES NOT REQUIRE SOURCES when redistributing, only proper claims http://studio.imagemagick.org/www/Copyright.html so even RT could use it without fear! -MAx

> http://www.imagemagick.org > > supports so many image formats: > http://www.imagemagick.org/www/formats.html