Hi all,

I'm adrift on this one + going round in circles after 2 months!

I'm looking to develop an app that presents multi-media layouts to end consumers. The app will allow editing of these final layouts, so must be able use techniques to draw grids and boxes around elements. In short, it needs to be able to draw:

• Images
• Text
• Video
• Simple geometry (rectangles, lines etc)

Preferably, would also like:

• Image and text effects such as drop-shadow, blur and outline
• PDF display
• GIF display

My preferable language is vb.net, but I could always move to c# if absolutely necessary (gotta make that painful journey one day!)

I've tried all-sorts: ShardDX, SlimDX, monogame, gorgon, skiasharpe, DeltaEngine, SFML, Veldrid

All fall short or get too low-level too quickly!

The closest I've gotten is via SharpDX, but I must admit I'm lost with all the technicalities and I got stuck at applying effects to bitmaps (my code-monkery led to my populating the backbuffer via RenderTarget, but image effects appear to leverage RenderContext, which I have no idea how to integrate into my RenderTarget approach (see HERE).

Of course, the irony is I can achieve all of the above via GDI+ and winforms, But naturally, this is incredibly slow. 

It does feel like I'm getting the closest by using low-level directx approaches, but the main problem is, I just can't get my head around the concepts (fine individually, but get stuck at how they all bind together!)

so, 2 requests:

1. Any ideas or guidance? (libraries that I may have missed; answers to the points I'm getting stuck at; directx guidance)
2. I have the feeling that once some core code is written around the above, the rest should be straightforward. Does anyone know of anyone providing coding services around SharpDX?

Thanks all,

Quote

[...] an app that presents multi-media layouts to end consumers [...]

[.. has Video, GIF, PDF support ..]

So... a web browser?

Fair point. I'll be a little more explicit. 

It's basically, going to be a remake of this:

It was made by layering multiple transparent winforms to display images, videos, gifs, text etc. Problem is, it's GDI so slow and cumbersome. 

It needs to be a desktop app, as emulator FrontEnds will send it game and system names and it will construct a controls layout, alongside other kinds of layout (marquees, game info etc). Thus the desktop app, as other software will need to send it command lines. 

Lastly, preferably, I'd also liek the ability to overlay other applications (e.g. emulator displays or the such) as a kind of 'pause' menu where you can select various game related info (controls, bio, music, instruction manual etc...)

Thus the need for more powerful 2d drawing. 

Hope that serves to specify a little more.