[whatwg] Hardware accelerated canvas

[Justin Novosad]

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Ashley Gullen <ashley at scirra.com> wrote:

> It sounds like the real issue is mobile:
> - it seems pretty difficult to make a desktop lose a context
> - most mobile browsers still use software rendering, or at least haven't
> had GPU acceleration very long, so there are unlikely to be bug reports
> about it
> - it sounds like mobile devices lose contexts much more easily
> Even so, I think an 'onforcerepaint' / 'onneedredraw' / 'onreset' type
> event is the best way to handle this.  If it's really that rare, most devs
> can ignore the event.  If it happens a lot (e.g. on mobile), it will
> gradually become common knowledge, built in to frameworks, etc.
>

That doesn't sound too evil, but the ideal solution would be one that would
not involve web standards at all. If there was a way of ensuring GPU
resource persistence on mobile platforms (swap-out resources rather than
discard them), then we would not be having this conversation. Making that
happen is a debate for a different audience. Unfortunately OS and graphics
APIs don't evolve at whatwg pace.

IMHO, the convenience of a "living standard" means that amending the
standard will often be an attractive shortcut even when it is not the best
solution.

    -Justin