The ::paint signal is the old way to paint an actor; the paint_node()
virtual function is the new way. It's still not possible to traverse the
whole scene graph and build a render tree of PaintNode instances, but
with this change we simultaneously cut out the ::paint signal emission
from the critical path for actors that are using the new PaintNode-based
API, and we retain backward compatibility in the interim period between
1.10 and 2.0.
Instead of our homegrown string building; this at least ensures that
we're generating proper data, instead of random strings. Plus, using
JsonNode and JsonBuilder, we can ask the PaintNode subclasses to
serialize themselves in a sensible way.
ClutterContent is an interface for creating delegate objects that handle
what an actor is going to paint.
Since they are a newly added type, they only hook into the new PaintNode
based API.
The position and size of the content is controlled in part by the
content's own preferred size, and by the ClutterContentGravity
enumeration.
The ::paint-node virtual inside ClutterActor is what we want people to
use when painting their actors.
Right now, it's a new code path, that gets called while painting; the
paint_node() implementation should only paint the actor itself, and not
its children — they will get their own paint_node() called when needed.
Internally, ClutterActor will automatically create a dummy PaintNode and
paint the background color; then control will be handed out to the
implementation on the class. This is required to maintain compatibility
with the old ::paint signal emission.
Once we are able to get rid of the paint (and pick) sequences, we'll
switch to a fully retained render tree.
Now that we have a proper scene graph API, we should split out the
rendering part from the logical and event handling part.
ClutterPaintNode is a lightweight fundamental type that encodes only the
paint operations: pipeline state and geometry. At its most simple, is a
way to structure setting up the programmable pipeline using a
CoglPipeline, and submitting Cogl primitives. The important take away
from this API is that you are not allowed to call Cogl API like
cogl_set_source() or cogl_primitive_draw() directly.
The interesting approach to this is that, in the future, we should be
able to move to a purely retained mode: we will decide which actors need
to be painted, they will update their own branch of the render graph,
and we'll take the render graph and build all the rendering commands
from that.
For the 1.x API, we will have to maintain invariants and the existing
behaviour, but as soon as we can break API, the old paint signal will
just go away, and Actors will only be allowed to manipulate the render
tree.
As it turns out, we do end up recursing inside the ::paint signal
emission - especially inside the conformance test suite.
This thoroughly sucks - and we'll only be able to fix it properly
when we bump API for 2.0.
ClutterActor should be able to hold all transitions, even the ones that
have been explicitly created.
This will allow to add new transitions types in the future, like the
keyframe-based one, or the transition group.
It should be possible to ask a timeline what is its duration, taking
into account eventual repeats, and which repeat is the one currently
in progress.
These two functions allow writing animations that depend on the current
state of another timeline.
It should be possible to set up the delay of a transition, but since
we start the Transition instance before returning control to the caller,
we cannot use clutter_actor_get_transition() to do it without something
extra-awkward, like:
transition = clutter_actor_get_transition (actor, "width");
clutter_timeline_stop (transition);
clutter_timeline_set_delay (transition, 1000);
clutter_timeline_start (transition);
for each property involved. It's much easier to add a delay to the
easing state of an actor.
Clutter is meant to be, and I quote from the README, a toolkit:
for creating fast, compelling, portable, and dynamic graphical
user interfaces
and yet the default mode of operation for setting an actor's state on
the scene graph (position, size, opacity, rotation, scaling, depth,
etc.) is *not* dynamic. We assume a static UI, and then animate it.
This is the wrong way to design an API for a toolkit meant to be used to
create animated user interfaces. The default mode of operation should be
to implicitly animate every state transition, and only allow skipping
the animation if the user consciously decides to do so — i.e. the design
tenet of the API should be to make The Right Thing™ by default, and make
it really hard (or even impossible) to do The Wrong Thing™.
So we should identify "animatable" properties, i.e. those properties
that should be implicitly animated by ClutterActor, and use the
animation framework we provide to tween the transitions between the
current state and the desired state; the implicit animation should
happen when setting these properties using the public accessors, and not
through some added functionality. For instance, the following:
clutter_actor_set_position (actor, newX, newY);
should not make the actor jump to the (newX, newY) point; it should
tween the actor's position between the current point and the desired
point.
Since we have to maintain backward compatibility with existing
applications, we still need to mark the transitions explicitly, but we
can be smart about it, and treat transition states as a stack that can
be pushed and popped, e.g.:
clutter_actor_save_easing_state (actor);
clutter_actor_set_easing_duration (actor, 500);
clutter_actor_set_position (actor, newX, newY);
clutter_actor_set_opacity (actor, newOpacity);
clutter_actor_restore_easing_state (actor);
And we can even start stacking animations, e.g.:
clutter_actor_save_easing_state (actor);
clutter_actor_set_easing_duration (actor, 500);
clutter_actor_set_position (actor, newX, newY);
clutter_actor_save_easing_state (actor);
clutter_actor_set_easing_duration (actor, 500);
clutter_actor_set_easing_mode (actor, CLUTTER_LINEAR);
clutter_actor_set_opacity (actor, newOpacity);
clutter_actor_set_depth (actor, newDepth);
clutter_actor_restore_easing_state (actor);
clutter_actor_restore_easing_state (actor);
And so on, and so forth.
The implementation takes advantage of the newly added Transition API,
which uses only ClutterTimeline sub-classes and ClutterInterval, to cut
down the amount of signal emissions and memory management of object
instances; as well of using the ClutterAnimatable interface for custom
properties and interpolation of values.
As a convenience for the C API.
Language bindings should already be using the GValue variants.
This commit also moves the custom progress functions out of the
clutter-interval.c, as they are meant to be generic interpolation
functions and not ClutterInterval-specific.
The ::paint, ::queue-redraw, and ::queue-relayout signals should be
marked as no-recurse and no-hooks; these signals are emitted *a lot*
during each frame, and since GLib has a bunch of optimizations for
signals with no closures, we should try and squeeze every single CPU
cycle we can.
