windows ce - 2d graphics library

Question

I have Windows CE 5.0 device and it doesn't support any hardware accelearation. I am looking for some good 2d graphics library to do following things. I prefer backend programming in Compact .Net Framework.

• Drawing fonts with antialiasing.
• drawing lines, and simple vector objects with antialiasing.
• I am not doing animation, so i don't care about frames per seconds performance.

i have looked into following libraries, but nothing suits me.

• opengl (vincent 3d software rendering) - works, but api is very low level and complex.
• openvg - no software implementation for windows ce.
• Cairo - api is very neat, but no wince build.
• Adobe Flash - installs as browser plugin , no activex support in wince.

Answer 1

Anti-aliased fonts in .Net CF 2.0+ can be done with Microsoft.WindowsCE.Form.LogFont -- after creating your logfont, you can use it with any WinForms widget's .Font property by converting it using System.Drawing.Font.FromLogFont().

...you might need to enable anti-aliasing in the registry for these to render properly, see this MSDN article for the right keys: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms901096.aspx][1].

There was a decent implementation of GDI+ for .Net CF 1.0 called "XrossOne Mobile GDI+", it's not longer supported, but you can get the source code here: http://www.isquaredsoftware.com/XrossOneGDIPlus.php -- Run it through the import wizard on VS2008 to build it for later versions of CF. I liked this library for its alpha transparency support without hardware acceleration, rounded rectangles and gradient support.

Answer 2

Someone was advertising this library in some forum. It's for Windows Mobile, but you can check it out. I have no experience with it. link

Answer 3

I have Google's skia library compiling under WindowsCE, although I haven't done much with it yet :) It wasn't too hard to get working. It does support a OpenGL/ES backend.

There is also AGG (Anti Grain Geometry) which is a heavy C++ library based on templates.