The CGLayer opaque data type, and the associated API, was added to the system starting with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. If your application must support older versions of the operating system, you will have to choose another offscreen drawing method. However in Tiger and above, CGLayer is usually a better method for creating an offscreen context than creating an offscreen bitmap.
Free Quartz 2d Graphics For Mac Os X Developers
Conceptually, a CGLayer is an offscreen cache for a Quartz 2D graphic. Note that a CGLayer is not necessarily an offscreen bitmap. The way the layer stores its graphic is an implementation detail that is private to Quartz 2D. The only assurance offered by a CGLayer is that the computer can reproduce a graphic as fast or faster when drawing the layer than it could by re-executing the drawing commands that placed the graphic on the layer. This means that a CGLayer is an excellent tool for caching graphics that you plan to use repeatedly. A CGLayer's graphic need not be cached in a bitmap. The technique that the layer uses to store its graphics is entirely up to Quartz 2D itself.
QuartzGL was introduced as an official feature in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (although it was a developer-only feature in Mac OS X 10.4 as Quartz 2D Extreme). However, it is off by default and is largely ignored by most developers. In this post, I look at how to enable QuartzGL, the performance impact it. With the powerful graphics capabilities of Quartz 2D, one of the most remarkable statements to make about the library is that, on its own, Quartz 2D is not a very good tool for drawing text.
Because a CGLayer chooses its own internal representation, it can select a resolution-independent representation when the layer is drawn on a PDF context or a pixel buffer stored on the video card for layers that draw to the screen. This allows the operating system to tailor the operation of drawing the layer to another context so that it executes as quickly as possible. Two examples illustrate the kinds of optimizations Quartz 2D might use when drawing with layers.
If an application creates a CGLayer to store a graphic off-screen and then draws that layer many times to the display, Quartz 2D can recognize that the same layer is drawn repeatedly. It can move a bitmap of the layer's graphics to the video card and then reproduce that graphic on screen very quickly by simply copying the pixels using the power of the graphics card instead of draining the horsepower of the CPU.
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When drawing a layer into a PDF context, Quartz 2D can create a separate PDF object to represent the layer's graphics and then re-use that object many times. Because the PDF commands to draw the object are likely to take up less space than the commands that draw the layer's graphics, the result is smaller PDF files. A PDF viewer is quite likely to be able to cache the layer's graphics again when it displays the file. That means that the PDF itself is quite likely to draw faster than if each copy of the layer graphic was redrawn explicitly. From the programmer's perspective, CGLayers offer some other advantages over offscreen bitmaps. For example, code that uses CGLayers do not have to contend with a lot of the details surrounding the construction of an offscreen bitmap.
CGLayers manage their own internal representations, which means that if the CGLayer uses an offscreen bitmap, the layer itself will manage the life cycle of the block of memory that contains the pixels. Another example is when using an offscreen bitmap to cache an image, the application can draw the cached image by creating a CGImage on the offscreen pixel buffer and drawing that image on an appropriate destination. Because the pixel buffer behind a CGImage is immutable, however, programs using this technique must be careful to ensure that they do not draw into the pixel buffer while the CGImage exists. To put it another way, the CGImage must be recreated each time the application draws in the pixel buffer. CGLayers do not share this restriction.
The contents of a CGLayer can accept new graphics at any time. Nokia dku5 driver for mac. In contrast, however, an offscreen bitmap allows the program to directly access and manipulate the pixels that make up its image. A CGLayer may not even have a pixel representation backing it up. CGLayers are the preferred offscreen drawing mechanism in many instances, but if an application wants to access the offscreen's pixel buffer, a CGBitmapContext is the better choice.