[Lazarus] NanoVG Graphics

[Anthony Walter]

Darius,

No I hadn't heard of GLPT before you posted the link. It looks interesting,
but I was just reading up on SFML and had a few thought which are
pertinent. I've been using SDL, and although it's a fairly good library,
there are other libraries which offer a few more features that I'd had to
implement in my toolkit, and now in retrospect I believe ought to be
included in libraries of the same vein, including the GLPT library you
mentioned.

Here are some of the things both GLPT and SDL do not handle, but I
believe ought to be included in a game/multimedia framework as they
sometimes require a bit of work and are things everyone will eventually
need is they write enough of these types of programs:

A stereo audio mixer that can handle mp3, ogg, and direct wav samples
without the need to include 3rd party additional modules
Text rendering with the ability to load local ttf files, get metrics, draw
to a texture, and possibly generate vector shapes
A unified TCP and UDP network stack
A unified image load, saving, and capture system
Audio input or recording function optionally with VOIP support
A tessellator to turn a complex shape into triangles with indexes,
supporting winding modes
The ability to ask for a graphics API type and version (eg, OpenGLES 2.0 or
Vulkan 1.1) receive a callback to load said API functions
A video decoder to take a video stream and convert frames to textures or
render buffers

Having listed those items, SFML handles a lot of those things. SDL can
handle most of them as well with their SDL modules, but I always avoid SDL
modules. GLPT doesn't handle much beyond window creating, events, some
image loading, and maybe a few basic text features.

Personally, I have gone the tough route and written Pascal units to
interface with several 3rd party libraries to add text and font features
(FreeType), audio decoders (mpg123), and video steam processing to render
buffers (libmpv). Now maybe it is convenient to use my library, but it's
Pascal and rider on top of all these things, which I am sure how SFML
works, but I am also fairly confident that a single well maintained cross
platform library with many more users, such as SFML or SDL with modules,
might be more attractive to people wanting to get started with everything
packed more neatly than the way my requirements are gathered.
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