Graphics Accelerated Authoring

[forfear]

Just an idea.
Graphics acceleration would be nice to have for desktop applications.

What do you think about graphics accelerated authoring environment for Capture, Flare and Mimic?

That would help when rendering, scaling and transforming images for different single-sourcing formats.

In fact, in a graphics accelerated pipeline, that would help a lot in the time taken to rebuild formats - could potentially reduce compilation by a fraction.

[NorthEast]

What is "graphics accelerated authoring" ?

When I googled it, the only result was for this topic!

[Andrew]

Presumably forfear is referring to using the graphics hardware to aid in processing / rendering tasks for images of all kinds.

There's a bunch of stuff available now in Windows Vista and 7 that can accelerate 2D graphics (and, if I recall, fonts) fairly effectively. They could use that. Whether or not I care about it really depends on what it would enable Flare to do. If we're talking about only speed increases, I don't really care too much. If we're talking about offering new functionality that will make my work easier or better, then I'm game.

[RamonS]

I have a faint idea that maybe the co-processing using the GPU is meant. Some apps use that to cut processing time by quite a bit, best example is the BOINC client. The concept is not new, some apps on the Commodore 64 used the processor in the 1541 floppy drive to accelerate processes.

[Andrew]

I was sort of assuming he meant accelerating actual graphics-type tasks. Flare is not particularly CPU-bound, unless your have extremely fast storage i/o.

[forfear]

What is "graphics accelerated authoring" ?

I have a faint idea that maybe the co-processing using the GPU is meant. Some apps use that to cut processing time by quite a bit, best example is the BOINC client. The concept is not new, some apps on the Commodore 64 used the processor in the 1541 floppy drive to accelerate processes.

Was probably referring to authoring software that is accelerated with a graphics processing unit or graphics card like RamonS mentioned. Windows 7 and Vista probably offer developers a way to build software for Windows that taps into some of the Direct 2D accelerated power for faster vector screen draws and manipulating bitmap images.
For example, video compression/encoding software that's accelerated can experience noticeable speed boosts of up to 3 times.
Its like comparing the time taken to either walk or to drive to Beijing - Bangkok.

Co-opting graphics accelerated processing power into the authoring experience. Just like graphics cards of today are increasingly being used to do more than increase frame rates for games. Instead its been used to enhance the user experience on mobile devices.

As it is, topic/document authoring isn't a graphics-heavy intensive task. Admittedly the main draws on wait time is in building outputs which are probably more disk intensive read/write operations. I am guessing if you have projects with series of high resolution images or screen captures, building a 300 page output, will take a long.

However, In 2D graphics rendering tasks — I can imagine compiling projects up to 70% faster or even more.
Screen draws or refreshing the user interface with hundreds of image laden topics would be waaaay faster.
Writing and editing topics with high resolutions pictures and videos into the XML environment would be even more seamless.
Capturing Mimic project frames would be almost instant.

Or even inline recompression of high definition video(H.264, HD video, MOV) in topics into smaller sizes for different outputs.

If you could scale graphics for different sizes. You could render type quicker, more accurately on the screen, or preview much more complex page layouts with richer preview options.

- Faster project builds for projects with lots of high DPI pictures or video media.
Which may need to be scaled down for online viewing.
- Natively 'smoothed' preview thumbnails of inserted pictures.
- Faster image and topic previews
- Smoother authoring experience, the ability to work with larger images and topics. Preview images, topics and page layouts, quickly.
- Faster redraws of the screen with complex page layouts.
- Capture large screens and apply immediate filters.

[forfear]

Hi!

I think in the coming years, if MadCap dev uses Direct 2D, we'll be getting this, as will users of IE9 and Firefox 3.7 and up for HTML 5 rendering.

However, users on Windows XP won't be getting this from Msft I think.

Here's what I think

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/17 ... indows_xp/

[RamonS]

It all depends on how many Flare users will still be on XP. At the moment, there will be plenty and that won't change for at least two years. After that it is a guessing game. Does Microsoft release a new Windows version by then that again introduces a whole batch of incompatibilities and rule changes? Will .NET still be around by then or are compiled binaries again the latest and greatest and frameworks and run times get declared as no-nos?
I don't see any of the advanced features coming to Flare any time soon.

[Andrew]

It all depends on how many Flare users will still be on XP. At the moment, there will be plenty and that won't change for at least two years. After that it is a guessing game. Does Microsoft release a new Windows version by then that again introduces a whole batch of incompatibilities and rule changes? Will .NET still be around by then or are compiled binaries again the latest and greatest and frameworks and run times get declared as no-nos?
I don't see any of the advanced features coming to Flare any time soon.

I don't know if we will see any such advanced features soon or not, but none of the reasons you have given are realistic.

[RamonS]

Just look at Windows 7 and the VB6 platform. W7 introduces a bunch of incompatibilities for software and VB6 was one of the most popular development platforms, but despite massive developer backlash Microsoft just killed it off. In the past writing everything to the registry was the recommended way and Microsoft poked fun at interpreted apps using ini or config files like Java based apps tend to do. Now with .NET we got interpreted apps and the move goes towards ini files (as was the way to go in the beginning of 32bit Windows).
I cannot tell the future, but based on the past 20 years I don't think that breaking backward compatibility and ditching a popular development platform are unheard of in the Microsoft world. It happened before and it will happen again if that means bigger sales. Microsoft isn't there to make developer's lives easier or do good to the Windows users, Microsoft's purpose is to rake in as much cash as possible and raise shareholder value. I don't mean that as a Microsoft-specific negative, it is the purpose of any publicly traded company. If alienating a group of customers causes a loss that is more than made up by new sales it is good business decision.

[Andrew]

Then MadCap shouldn't have chosen .NET to begin with (and I already know your opinion on that). Since they have, it's not realistic to expect that a reason they wouldn't use more advanced techniques is ".NET may be removed" or "might have to compile a binary someday."

The computer world changes rapidly. Adapt or perish. If using the same language version, the same OS version, same application version, etc. for more than 10 years is critical to your business, Windows is not where you should be. You need open source software, where you can modify the code yourself to make sure it always works...and even that comes at an increasingly high cost as time marches on.

[RamonS]

Yea, I advised against using .NET just because it limits the users to very specific Windows versions and it also hampers performance. Compiled binary executing machine code are much faster by design.
The main issue here is that for many the cost of commercial software licenses is a large burden. In some cases the return on the investment is reached before there is no way other than to buy the new version. For those cases and those companies it doesn't matter much and makes sense to throw software away and buy new stuff. Many other companies or self-employed contractors may not be able to reach that point in time or have the financial resources to shoulder the expenses all at once. It is nice for those folks who have a permanent position and an employer that is able to buy new Windows licenses, new hardware, new servers, new Windows Server licenses, new MS Office packages, new this, new that. Look at the tech writing field and you find that permanent positions of that kind are not the norm. That is why there are plenty of Flare users who run V3 or V4 on XP boxes and likely will do so for quite some time. Explain to them the concept of "adapt or perish". In many cases it is likely one and the same.

[trent the thief]

The concept is not new, some apps on the Commodore 64 used the processor in the 1541 floppy drive to accelerate processes.

I was tempted to call you an oldster until I realized I knew exactly what you were talking about