Direct GDI Programming in C on Windows

Question

I recently became interested in programming as efficient as possible for Windows in direct C. I still want to use the GUI for some things, is the Windows API / GDI also a respectable way of doing this? I do not believe that you can call WPF regularly, as this is largely a managed business. Is GDI really not speeding up in Vista / Win7? If so, is there another alternative for getting hardware accelerated graphical interfaces from direct C? (Except, perhaps, an open-list approach with OpenGL)

In addition, Petzold was the gold standard for selecting Windows API programming using C, is there a newer version of his materials, or did someone else raise the mantle? The last edition I saw since 1999 ...

Answer 1

Microsoft has a page comparing GDI vs Direct2D hardware acceleration.

GDI has always been an accelerated API: of course, it always stayed until the actual implementation of the GDI driver to decide which GDI DDI bits are actually accelerated, therefore, accelerated bitblt / stretch blit bit operations were usually performed, and the entire line drawing and other effects are performed by the processor.

, GDI " " API, , , .

GdiPlus , , , CLR system.graphics.

Answer 2

DirectX , GDI, - , . GDI ( Windows 7 XP, Vista), DirectX - .

, - WPF : Windows Three Dimensional Presentation Foundation