dotnet drawing api: I'm making plans to develop an 2D interactive vector graphics library. It
will be used to render basic graphics primitives (lines, polygons,...). It
has to be fast and my questione is, which one to use on Windows Vista, GDI+
or DirectX? Has anyone tested the performance of both on Vista?

I know DirectX is much faster but I have never used it before and since
Vista's UI will be based on it, GDI+ could actually use DirectX for render.
Now, I don't need super-fast performance but I need enough to make
animations smooth. GDI+ on WindowsXP is currently too slow for what I want
and I hope in Vista it'll be fast enough.

regards
Tomaz

[quoted text, click to view]

Now the .NET 3.0 (really, 2.1) is out, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
provides 90% of what you need (take a long hard look at routable events and
the shapes functionality)... and it uses DirectX 9/10 under the hoods for
all 2D stuff (well, most)... you'll have to have a look here for more info:

Shapes:
http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms750506.aspx

Advanced Text Formatting:
http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/wpf_conceptual/html/f0a7986e-f5b2-485c-a27d-f8e922022212.asp

Routed Events:
http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms742806.aspx

Styles:
http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745683.aspx


And more...

I wrote a guitar tablature editor in C# using GDI+ (from scratch) and am
redoing it in WPF and find myself i a much writing much less code and using
much greater functionality in doing so.

Of course, this assumes that you want to target WPF. Your end users will
need to intall the .NET 3.0 framework (and 2.0) but, otherwise, there is a
Focus On 2D with DirectX book that I found informational:
http://www.amazon.com/Focus-Direct3D-Premier-Press-Development/dp/1931841101





Thanks,
Shawn