Advice: Which drawing API to use?
Advice: Which drawing API to use?
- Subject: Advice: Which drawing API to use?
- From: John Pannell <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:36:20 -0600
Hi all-
I'm preparing to develop a view remarkably similar to the drawing canvas of Quartz Composer or Xcode's core data modeler: the view features a grid background, draggable nodes featuring a header and multiple rows of elements, and the elements can be connected to elements in other nodes with pipes. Ideally, the pipes will animate to represent a "flow", like the moving stripes of an indeterminate progress indicator.
I've whipped myself into a bit of writer's block trying to decide which drawing API to use. The candidates I'm considering are Cocoa/Quartz or Core Animation (layer-hosting view). The eventual app will run on Mac OS X and iPad, and I'm comfortable enough with each API that I don't have a preference based on lack of experience. Platforms are Lion+ and iOS 4+. Here are my priorities:
1. View is zoomable and looks good at all zoom levels.
2. Text looks good and is antialiased.
3. All elements support subtle transparency.
4. Animation (i.e. flow in pipes) is a bonus.
My gut is to go with Core Animation: items 1, 3, and 4 are all straightforward, but I have encountered issues with text antialiasing of text layers with transparency. I know I can achieve all four items with Cocoa/Quartz, but it seems like more work than CA. My biggest concern is a lack of familiarity with zooming a view containing text and maintaining a quality appearance - I've not tried this in either API.
I'd appreciate any discussion on these APIs, just to get me feeling confident enough one way or the other to get off the fence. I can't believe how long I've sat around waiting for mental clarity on this - starting to understand the whole architecture astronaut thing :-)
Any help appreciated - thanks!
John
John Pannell
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