Skia VS nanovg

Not specially something that you cannot do without WASM but at $WORK we are using a WASM build of Skia [0] to render canvas from nodejs.

Why use WASM ? Because we wanted to stay close to our stack (ie. calling wasm from nodejs). Do it work ? Yes, memory consumption is quite heavy though (each WASM module have its own heap that can quickly grow).

However we are looking to directly use Skia now and avoid the overhead of WASM so i think its a nice solution in the beginning but you might want to ditch it later on.

[0]: https://github.com/google/skia/tree/main/modules/canvaskit

I use SkVx from Skia. It uses compilers' vector extensions and few platform-specific intrinsics. If no vector extension available (e.g. msvc), a scalar implementation is provided in the hope that compiler can vectorize it.

Regarding compiling to JS, you can compile dart to JS however when running Flutter on mobile platforms such as iOS or Android, you're not compiling to JS but instead you're using Dart to draw widgets on the screen via Flutter engine which uses a cross-platform graphics engine under the hood called Skia. If you're running on web on the other hand, your dart code would compile to vector graphics rendered within a canvas element in pure HTML.

It built on a render framework named skia, JetBrains create a kotlin mapping which named skiko for it.

Flutter applications are written in the Dart programming language, and can connect to platform languages such as Java, Kotlin, Swift, and Objective-C. Also, thanks to ffi support, it is possible to interact with the C code directly . Flutter itself is built with C, C++, Dart, and Skia (a 2D rendering engine).

Fleet does not use Compose, but it does use Skiko[1], which also provides binding for Skia[2] (the native graphics library also used by Chrome & Flutter).

The main difference between the libraries is that Skija provides Java/JVM bindings for Skia, whereas Skiko provides Kotlin bindings for Kotlin/JVM, Kotlin/JS, and Kotlin/Native targets. Of course Skiko's Kotlin/JVM bindings can be used with other JVM languages, not just with Kotlin.

[1] https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko

[2] https://skia.org/

RN Skia: https://github.com/Shopify/react-native-skia Skia itself: https://skia.org/

Yeahp, it renders the controls itself using skiasharp, which I believe uses skia

If you want CPU rendering perhaps tiny-skia meets your needs? Also proper Skia is generally the Cairo alternative, though I dunno that its any easier to use or compile than Cairo is. Alternatively you could try Raqote or Piet.

First step: Read the documentation. I see at the bottom of the github page that there's a link, so I go there: https://skia.org/

NanoVG is the closest thing I came across when I had a similar quesiton: https://github.com/memononen/NanoVG

unfortunately it doesn't seem like it's getting steady updates now unlike the last time I checked. But I imagine it's pretty mature at this point. There also seem to be ports in Metal/DX11 if you didn't want to be stuck in OpenGL.

Also there's NanoVG if you really want a vector api in C, but don't need anti-aliased clipping.

Getting sufficient antialiasing quality for 2D graphics is difficult on GPUs. https://github.com/memononen/nanovg accomplishes this with GL2/GLES2 level hardware for most of the stuff one would want to render as part of a GUI. My project https://github.com/styluslabs/nanovgXC supports rendering arbitrary paths with exact coverage antialiasing, but requires GLES3.1 or GL4 level hardware for reasonable performance.

> to learn the 'nuts and bolts' of rendering

These nuts and bolts are very different between CPU and GPU. CPU-based libraries are painting pixels in bitmaps in system memory. Most GPU-based libraries are uploading indexed triangle meshes, and rendering them with weird shaders.

Worse, there're no good open source implementations of GPU-based ones. Microsoft ships an implementation as a part of OS (Direct2D) but it's not open source. Linux simply doesn't have an equivalent.

At least for initial versions, consider C interop with this https://github.com/memononen/nanovg It cuts a few corners (no cleartype for text, CPU overhead for repeated rendering of same static paths) but it's still good overall, simple, and easy to use.

> My only concern with C# is the cross compatibility

Works well on Linux, Windows and OSX, including ARM CPUs. Not sure about Android and iOS, never tested.

My largest concern with C# would be performance. Technically the language allows to code in any style, but most guides and examples are using OO-heavy one.

In fact, if using a modern graphics pipeline with shaders, you will actually have to learn how to draw a single rectangle to your screen, and then use that knowledge to draw (anti-aliased) lines, rectangles, arcs, circles, ellipses, etc. too. For instance, have a look at https://www.cairographics.org/ https://github.com/vurtun/nuklear https://github.com/memononen/nanovg and https://github.com/nical/lyon. There are probably also tutorials on how to draw vectorized graphics using OpenGL, Vulkan, etc.

What is your take on the underlying library NanoVG stating

In terms of other people's projects: stb, microui, and nanovg come to mind

My library uses nanovg, a canvas API on top of OpenGL, written in C and stb_truetype for font rasterization.

NanoVG: https://github.com/memononen/nanovg