Re: Platform independent graphical display for Emacs

[Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>]

Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:

> Just to check your assertion, I tried to build Skia on my Debian box
> and, sure enough, after ten minutes of work the build succesfully
> completed. I had some issues that were swiftly solved with a web search.

Now try to link it with Emacs, enjoy the pages of linker errors, and get
frustrated two weeks later when the Skia developers change the signature
of some basic function causing the program to not work anymore.

That's been my experience working with Skia, and I think other people
will agree as well.

> A closer look at Skia makes me think that it is not a good candidate for
> Emacs, for several reasons. But Skia was just an example, we (or, better
> said, the OP) can examine what other options are available.

I would really appreciate names.

> We could turn the frame into a canvas. Take
> display-fill-column-indicator for instance. Instead of faking a line
> with characters, we could simply draw the line as a graphic object.

Alternatively, we could also ask RIF->draw_window_divider (which already
exists in every graphical port) to draw a line there.

It's just that nobody has put in the work to make that happen.