Vector Graphics on Windows Mobile - c#

I have to make an application that runs on both Windows (XP/Vista) and Windows Mobile. The graphics interface must be scalable (for different resolutions) and the controls must be custom (like the ones usually found on music apps).
SVG was my instant choice but the lack of support on Windows Mobile pretty much kill my time budget. I've tried to evaluate WMF and it seems the right answer but i don't really like it.
I was thinking about WPF/XAML but i don't know what are the differences between Windows and Windows Mobile.
The project must be in C# or C++ and it's a commercial project (thus no GPLed libraries).
What would be the best choice? What ma I overlooking?

WinForms has limited support for scaling:
http://sellsbrothers.com/writing/winformsAutoScaling.htm
You may also want to look at "anchor" and "docking":
https://web.archive.org/web/1/http://articles.techrepublic%2ecom%2ecom/5100-10878_11-6165908.html
Combined together you should be able to create a UI that works for both desktop and mobile.

You can do scaling UI in .NET compact framework, like Erwin said with docking and achoring. In the windows mobile applications i have written i do normaly have to write some custom code that deals with things like Font scaling ( Touch founds might need bigger Font then system default if the text should be clickable).
I dont think your going to get it to scale picture correctly without code, i found some question releated that on this site. In my experience i write 99.9% of my code so it runs fine on both windows and windows mobile, but i do make a different UI for windows mobile.
If normaly write code in .NET 2.0 / .NET 2.0 Compact Framework, but if your you dont care about having to install .NET 3 then it should be better ( .NET 2 is wider spread out then .NET 3 )

Another option is the Qt library which is written in C++. It is LGPL which means that it can be used in commercial products without having to release your sources (except for changes to the library itself). If for some reason that isn't good enough they also sell commercial licenses.
It runs on Windows and Windows Mobile. As a bonus if you do a reasonable job of programming (and assuming everything else you're doing coding wise supports it) your application can also be run on Mac OSX, Linux and S60.
It has support for Scalable Vector Graphics, a Canvas with full widget support and a bunch of other nifty features as well! I'd suggest checking out the documentation and seeing if it has everything you need.

Silverlight?

Related

Win CE 7 application development

I have requirement that we need to develop a rich UI application(similar to WPF or silverlight). The target device is having embedded OS Win CE 7. how can i achieve this, after so much R&D i got to know that
1. we have to user Silverlight for GUI and C++ as backend coding
2. we can create the MFC application using some third party SDK we will not be able to get rich UI
Also, i read that we can add components in WIN CE 7 for compact framework.
Is my above understanding correct, can someone throw some light on this?
Just to add my 2 cents to Chris and Paolo's replies, if you are not building the OS image for the target device or, at least, can't control the features it supports, your choice may be limited by the set of components that were included into the OS image provided with the device.
Windows CE is highly componentized and both the badly named "Silverlight for Windows Embedded" (XAML) and .NET Compact Framewor runtimes can be left out of the OS image to save storage space and memory.
The XAML runtime can leverage graphic acceleration (if the HW you are using provides it and the BSP includes drivers to use it, of course) and this may lead to a more responsive system, compared to a full .NET implementation.
I would also try to stay away from MFC for new implementation. The only good reason to use MFC is that you already have an UI framework that fit your needs and is based on it.
Currently on CE you can decide between an easy to design and rich UI with complex to develop and debug code-behind (XAML) or an easy to develop .NET application with an ugly windows 95-like UI that require lot of work to be "beautified". XAML in the hand may merge the best of both worlds (requiring additional cost and two heavvy runtimes on your target, but this may not be an issue if you have a powerful x86 machine or a graphic accelerated ARM Cortex).
To develop application on WEC 7 you need an SDK built from OEM that give you the target board.
If you want to develop on a Virtual PC image you need Platform Builder to use CEPC BSP and create an O.S. image and the corresponding SDK.
After that, you can develop using Silverlight only with C++ but you can use .Net Compact Framework and managed code for Windows Forms development.
Paolo.
It really, really depends on both your definition of "rich" and the graphics capability of the hardware you're targeting.
CE 7 supports the .NET Compact Framework. Many people will say that you can't do "rich" UI in the CF, but that's not really true. You can't do it with the standard controls, but if you do your own custom control drawing, you can do pretty well. Yet, it's a lot of work, but it can be done. The limitations here are in alphablending (not fun to get working) and animation (also not fun), but with dedication you can work around many issues.
CE 7.0 also supports "Silverlight for Windows Embedded" (a.k.a. SWE). First thing to know there is that it's really not Silverlight. It's a XAML rendering engine, but any other Silverlight assets you might have won't work with it.
SWE supports only C++, though since it is COM based, it can be wrapped in CF classes and then used from managed code. I've seen a couple of companies do this, and one even offers it as a product.
MFC is available, but since MFC was crap even 10 years ago, I definitely wouldn't use it today. If you want to use C++ but not SWE, there are better options than MFC. STL and WTL come to mind for windowing apps.

How to port existing Windows Store Application to Windows8 Mobile App ?

We have existing Windows Store application which is developed using C# and XAML. We want to port the same to Windows 8 Mobile application. Is there any Guidelines available for this ?
Well at first I would start figuring out the differences
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj681690%28v=vs.105%29.aspx
http://blog.markedup.com/2013/07/winrt-windows-phone-8-code-sharing-pitfalls/
When I ported two of my (smaller) apps, I put as much in a PCL (portable class library) as I could. All the stuff that remained in the project itself needed to be rewritten. If you have well-maintainable code, there should be only UI (what you have to adapt anyway) and very few platform specific code (like accessing filesystem, camera or whatever) left. This is the part you must redevelop.
Dnt know how you have made these applications well If you have followed MVVM pattern then it is very easy to port windows and windows phone apps from one to other. You just need to take care of new XAML UIs every thing except some platform specific liberalizes will work. While making any of windows store and windows phone application you should use the liberaries that both platforms can consume. For example you can use LEX.db for the database.
here are very good explanations for it.
sharing code between windows phone and windows 8 app -1
sharing code between windows phone and windows 8 app -2
hope this will help
The answers given so far are quite good. One thing to note is that Windows Phone 8.1 is about to be released, which will share many of the WinRT libraries. This will mean that in a few months (as early as May), the shared libraries between the two platforms will greatly increase. You can download the leaked SDK to see what some of the changes will be.
Not that you should wait until then, and creating a PCL is definitely going to help you (especially if you want to later move to iOS, Android as well). It's just something to keep in mind.

Difference between WPF and Flex

I am a WPF developer and few days ago I came to know about Flex. Now,I got Following list of questions.
Both of them to be used for creating rich GUI application. So, are
they competitors to each other.**
If both are to be used for same purpose, then which one should be preferred.**
Moreover, I was also wondering that WPF is based on DirectX for rendering as
it does vector-based rendering, but at the same time I am also keen to know
that How Flex renders, Flex is based on what??**
Does Flex can also use GPU based rendering... Is there anyway to use Shader in Flex.**
I am very much confused about Flex, because I am very new to Flex........So, Please clear my doubts, as I might be having totally incorrect perception about Flex
1 Both of them to be used for creating rich GUI application. So, are
they competitors to each other.
Only to a certain extent. As far as I know WPF can only be used to create windows-based applications. Flex' initial primary target was the web and most Flex applications were so-called "Rich Internet Applications".
Later Adobe created AIR, which is a virtual machine that lets you run the same applications on the OS itself, often by reusing 99% of the code that was written for the web apps. Some API's were added to access native functionalities of the OS (client-side database, file I/O, running/accessing native processes, etc.). AIR applications can be deployed on Windows, Mac and Linux alike, though development of the AIR vm for Linux has been stopped.
The last step in this story is that AIR applications can now also be packaged as apps that can be deployed on mobile OS's. Again because it t
runs in a VM, this offers a "write-once, deploy-everywhere" solution. Both Android and iOS are supported (not sure about BlackBerry but who cares). On the Flex side of things, some mobile-specific UI components were added to the framework.
2 If both are to be used for same purpose, then which one should be preferred.
The choice is entirely up to you and depends on factors like knowledge about the framework, specific requirements that you might have, etc., etc.
3 Moreover, I was also wondering that WPF is based on DirectX for rendering as it does vector-based rendering, but at the same time I am also keen to know that How Flex renders, Flex is based on what??
Flex is a framework that compiles to ActionScript which in turn compiles to abc bytecode. That bytecode will be interpreted and run by the Flash VM.
The roots of Flash lie in vector-based rendering (it was the solution to render vector graphics on the web for the two previous decades). All stock graphics for the Flex UI components are thus vector-based.
4 Does Flex can also use GPU based rendering... Is there anyway to use Shader in Flex.
GPU acceleration has been added to the Flash/ActionScript API somewhere in the last 5 years, but because the Flex framework was created long before that, and porting it to the new GPU-accelerated system would be too complicated, Flex does not benefit from that evolution.
But you can use a Flex UI side by side with GPU-accelerated components. You could for instance create a normal Flex application with just one component that renders a 3D model that kind of lives outside the Flex display list.
Usually only games written for the Flash VM do leverage the GPU acceleration. Most of them use the Starling framework. For mobile UI's you also have the option of the FeathersUI framework, which provides a GPU-accelerated mobile component set on top of Starling.
Note that #Vinodharajan's answer is not entirely correct in that the Flex framework is no longer property of Adobe. Adobe donated it to the Apache foundation about two years ago and it has been evolving there ever since.
Flex is a Adobe base front end product. This internally uses Flash to render its content on the browser or Adobe Air for standalone application. This can use hardware rendering. You can just think this as a alternate from Adobe for WPF.

Which Graphics Framework for Windows 8? MonoGame? OpenGL and Xaml/DirectX Mixing?

I would like to develop a game for windows 8, but since Xna isn't supported, i don't really know, if it is good to use something like MonoGame - because i think, it doesn't make any sense to use MonoDevelop with OpenGL while the UI Frontend runs with DirectX. But my searches and on "apptivate.ms", they still force the developers to use MonoDevelop - but why would a corporation like Microsoft even do this?
And i don't like to build my game in C++ with DirectX, because in my case, it's not a big game, and my favorite language (also, my language at work) is C#..
Btw., it would not be a big deal for me to write this game with OpenGL or C++, because I've got a lot of experience in these two for the past four years, but in this case, i like to have a "fast" and "save" solution like C# and a Graphics Framework.
So... maybe someone has the answer to these qustions:
Should i use MonoGame with Xaml / C# and don't worry about the mix of DirectX and OpenGL?
Or is there even another DirectX/Game Framework which i can use?
Or maybe, i'm totally wrong, and Xaml doesn't need DirectX? Or i can force MonoGame to use DirectX?
Or, another point - would something like "System.Drawing" fast enough for a spaceshooter with some nice shading effects (I think, for my case, i need shading and something like bloom, blurring etc.)? Maybe, Microsoft added a new 2D drawing library? (But i think its still gdi+ )
Your question is ambiguous if you are referring to Windows 8 Metro (aka Modern) or Windows 8 Desktop, but I assume it's the Metro version.
If you want to develop a game in C# for Win8 Metro without using a commercial solution, you can use:
SharpDX which is a low level DirectX API for .NET or the up-coming SharpDX.Toolkit (check latest news on the website) which is a high level framework around Direct3D11 (with a XNA like API, but with full Direct3D11 support). SharpDX is the only C# wrapper covering the whole DirectX API that is certified to work under Windows 8.
MonoGame which is using SharpDX for its Metro backend. I haven't heard that you need to use MonoDevelop for it, as it is working with an existing XNA project and VS 2012 should work just fine.
ANX which is also using SharpDX for its Metro backend.
Concerning the previous answer, If Win8 Modern is assumed, you can't use OpenTK, as OpenGL is not a certified API for the Microsoft App Store and SlimDX is not compatible with Windows 8 Metro.
There is an OpenGL to DirectX wrapper in the works that allows use of OpenGL in Windows 8 Modern applications. It's not complete yet but it may be sufficient if you want cross-platform compatibility and are willing to target only the subset of OpenGL that is implemented (or are willing to implement the rest yourself and hopefully contribute back.)
https://gl2dx.codeplex.com
Update: gl2dx seems to be dead as of November 2013, but there is a similar project, ANGLE, which implements most (if not all) of the OpenGL ES 2.0 spec and the EGL spec on top of either DirectX 9 or 11. This is the method by which Firefox and Google Chrome do WebGL on Windows.
http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/
If you want to use OpenGL and c#:
http://www.opentk.com/
For DirectX and c#:
http://www.slimdx.org/
or
http://sharpdx.org/
GDI+ is out bounds of Metro/Modern UI apps, if you're interested there some companies that look to make replacement apis like this one: http://www.moderncomponents.com/products/DrawingLibrary/, it's still in it's early stages, but looks good and may help you to create some simple games.

Best Windows language for multitouch and large bitmaps?

I will be developing an interactive application, involving multitouch, several layers of large bitmaps, and video playback. The screen resolution will be fairly large (1920x1280).
For several years, I have developed interactives in Flash, iOS, and OS X Cocoa. However, this project must run on a Windows box, so iOS & Cocoa are impossible. Also, I'm concerned about performance in Flash, since there may be 3 videos playing simultaneously, and large bitmaps moving around.
I know little about the technologies available on Windows. I'm investigating Silverlight, C#, Unity, Processing, and Java. If anyone can offer advice, it will be greatly appreciated.
You seem to be investigating several technologies on different levels:
C# and Java are programming languages. What you prefer may depend on your existing skills, but C# is from Microsoft so chances are that you will experience less friction using this language if you develop for Windows. Picking the right programming language is an important decision.
Silverlight is a "technology stack" from Microsoft. It enables you to develop XAML based applications that run in the browser. Compared to the native WPF stack it is less powerful. Choosing Silverlight, WPF or another technology stack like Processing.js is an important decision.
Unity is a dependency injection container from Microsoft. You can use this or any other suitable container if you like. Or none at all. You don't really have to think about this until you have made some of the more important decisions about your project.
Personally, I don't have experience with the type of application you describe, but I would go with C# and WPF. WPF has some support for multitouch on Windows, and only if it isn't adequate for your requirements you need to to go native and develop in say C++ which tends to require more work.
Multitouch in Windows 8 has been redesigned but unless you want to develop for a yet to be release operating system this is not an option.
Use Visual C++ if you like to create a LAN based Application, C++ is known for it's power and you could have many resources that could help you in developing this application. If you're going to create this application for web Use ASP.net(C#) C# is known for its flexibility and class libraries dedicated for web and client appilcation i also advice the use of WPF and Silverlight applications.
I suggest you have a look at Windows 8 and Metro Apps. Here is a link to start with this: The Microsoft BUILD conference, Windows 8, and the new UX Challenge. C# (.NET languages in fact), HTML5 and XAML are clearly the direction. Native C++ is back in town with WinRT. Silverlight is now in the gray area :-)
Even if you don't use Windows 8, it will give you a good overview of multitouch future in the Windows space.

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