Leo's Rantings : Win7

introducing Direct2D and DirectWrite

lblanco — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 02:55:00 GMT

At the 2008 PDC, Kam Vedbrat and I introduced two brand new DirectX APIs, to be included in Windows 7: Direct2D and DirectWrite. Direct2D is geared towards high-quality vector and bitmap graphics, with the performance characteristics of hardware-acceleration as you'd expect from a DirectX API, whereas DirectWrite is a text processing stack that can be used with any rendering technology, most notably, of course, Direct2D. We believe these two APIs will do for native code developers what WPF did for managed code developers, from the point of view of enabling visually stunning interfaces and readability rivaling the printed page.

For more details, check out the video of our PDC presentation, available at Channel 9.

at the PDC again

lblanco — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:08:00 GMT

I'm back in Los Angeles for this year's PDC. It was a long shot, given that the group I happen to be on is sending a smaller percentage of people to the PDC than the WPF team did back in '05, but thankfully I have an opportunity to present, which means I have an opportunity to attend. BTW, if you are at the PDC then check out PC18, Wednesday at 1:15pm, something about Windows 7 -- come by to find out what :-).

Windows 7 will be called... "Windows 7"

lblanco — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:01:00 GMT

It seems we've settled on an official name for the next version of Windows, codenamed Windows 7, and that name is (drumroll...) "Windows 7".