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UXCocoaGraphics

UXCocoaGraphics is the AppKit realization of UXGraphics, sibling of UXGdiGraphics.

#use <UXKit>            // or #import "UXCocoaGraphics.xc"

The same primitives, over an NSGraphicsContext

Section titled “The same primitives, over an NSGraphicsContext”

The drawing ops act on the NSGraphicsContext set by the draw in progress. They live in the shim (libUXAppKit.m), so no Cocoa type crosses into portable code.

Coordinates passed in are bounds-relative; the bound origin makes them absolute. This matches GEM and GDI, so a drawRect body is written once.

The view is flipped, and that is a decision

Section titled “The view is flipped, and that is a decision”

macOS is the one platform whose default coordinate space grows y upward. The toolkit’s protocol grows y down, as GEM, GDI, cairo, Canvas2D, UIKit and Android Canvas all do.

Instead of inverting every coordinate in every primitive and every view, the shim’s UXDrawView declares itself flipped. That one override makes the vocabulary agree with the other six backends, with no height - y anywhere.

Flipping per call would make every custom view’s arithmetic platform-dependent, and a bug there would look like a layout bug rather than a coordinate one.

It has no theme art

Section titled “It has no theme art”
hasThemeArt()      // false

There are no drawable theme slices to call, so the toolkit draws the pieces itself, as on Windows.

This applies only to the drawing vocabulary for views the toolkit paints itself. The native controls UXAppKitDriver realizes (NSTableView, NSSlider, NSPopUpButton and the rest) are fully native and look it.

It strokes natively

Section titled “It strokes natively”
strokesNatively()      // true

A stroked path goes to Cocoa at sub-pixel precision with Cocoa’s own joins. The neutral offsetter’s whole-pixel vertices wobble by up to half a pixel, which is visible under antialiasing.

Arrowheads remain neutral, because Cocoa has no arrowhead. See UXPainter.

See also

Section titled “See also”