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Degrafa team aims to bring declarative drawing into Flex


By Alex Handy
December 22, 2008 — 
Adobe's Flex platform now offers FXG, an interchangeable graphics format. But while FXG takes its cues from scalable vector graphics, the Degrafa project brings declarative SVG directly into Flex. The developers of this open-source graphics framework say that it eases the use of scalable vector graphics and animations in Flex development. Jason Hawryluk, co-founder and architect of Degrafa, said that ActionScript isn't up to snuff when it comes to certain graphical tasks. “In ActionScript, at the programming level, it is very difficult to do things like [draw] arrows and pie charts and wedge-shaped objects, so we wanted to bring those commands up a level into a framework that would allow developers to create graphics, and not have to know all the under-the-hood stuff,” said Hawryluk.

Tom Gonzalez, framework engineer on Degrafa, said that the team's work is focused on removing the use of graphical API code and replacing it with XML-based markup.

“For me, I have been doing software for 20 years," said Gonzalez. "I've done complex programming on the graphics side of things, which was typically making traditional procedural graphical API code. Taking that to markup allowed me to do things more easily. It opens a new development paradigm.

“When you look at UI development, you're using some type of tooling or you're using some type of low-level coding. The difference here is, I think, Degrafa strikes a happy medium between the two. When you start dealing with complex relationships procedurally, it becomes difficult for me as a human to see those pieces of code. Using a markup structure, you can see the relationships between those objects. It allows me to work much quicker,” said Gonzalez

Juan Sanchez, co-founder and user experience architect on Degrafa, said that Adobe is currently working on similar development tools. Adobe's FXG, he said, will features some similar functionality, though he added that after being invited to see Adobe's work, he and the Degrafa team remain confident that their open-source framework will remain relevant, even in the face of Adobe's release. Specifically, Sanchez said that Degrafa is architected to expand and deal with larger graphical problems than FXG.

Greg Dove, another developer on Degrafa, said that there is a current hole filled by the software. “FXG offers a set of functionality to perform somewhat similar things in the Flash Player 10 model. What Degrafa does is let people do that now using Flex 2 or Flex 3.”

Hawryluk said that Degrafa should hit version 1.0 sometime in the first quarter of 2009.


Related Search Term(s): Degrafa, Flex, graphics, open source, Adobe


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