[whatwg] Grouping in canvas 2d

[Rik Cabanier]

I agree.
At this point we got positive feedback from the blink people.
What do the WebKit and Firefox people think of this proposal?

Rik

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Jürg Lehni <lists at scratchdisk.com> wrote:

> I am very much interested in this feature. Of course you can use separate
> canvases to achieve the same, which is what we currently do in Paper.js,
> but it appears to be rather slow to do so. I think performance could
> improve a lot which this alternative API proposal.
>
> Jürg
>
> On Jun 13, 2013, at 20:57 , Rik Cabanier <cabanier at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Last year, I requested if grouping could be added to canvas.
> > The API would look like this:
> >
> > void beginLayer();
> > void beginLayer(unsigned long x, unsigned long y, unsigned long w,
> unsigned
> > long h);
> > void endLayer();
> >
> >
> > When you call beginLayer, you inherit everything from the graphics state
> > except shadows, opacity and the current compositing mode. Those will
> reset
> > to their initial value.
> > At endLayer time, the graphics state will be restored and you will draw
> the
> > content of the group.
> >
> > so for instance, if you want multiply blend with opacity of .5
> >
> > ctx.globalAlpha = .5;
> > ctx.globalCompositeOperation = "multiply";
> > ctx.beginLayer();
> > ... // drawing
> > ctx.endLayer();
> >
> > This would cause everything between begin/endLayer to be drawn normally.
> > This result is then blended and composited at endLayer time.
> >
> > Last year, people argued that you could achieve the same effect by using
> a
> > temporary canvas so this API is not really needed.
> > I would like to see if people are more open to this API now.
> > Reasons to have it:
> > - it is easily achievable with existing graphics libraries.
> > - it is a very common idiom. You can cut down on the amount of JS needed.
> > - if you want to avoid antialiasing issue, you need to carefully set the
> > CTM on the temporary canvas and remove the CTM from the current canvas
> > - creating a temporary canvas has a higher overhead than simply starting
> a
> > layer.
> > - creating lots of temporary canvas objects creates memory overhead
> > - is polyfillable for older canvas implementations
> >
> > Rik
>
>