This Month in Xilem, June 2024 (#56)

Lots of significant updates in this one --------- Co-authored-by: Raph Levien <[email protected]>
linebender · Jul 3, 2024 · f7e056e · f7e056e
1 parent bb07001
commit f7e056e
Show file tree

Hide file tree

Showing 4 changed files with 67 additions and 0 deletions.
diff --git a/content/blog/2024-07-03-tmix-06/Minesweeper.png b/content/blog/2024-07-03-tmix-06/Minesweeper.png
diff --git a/content/blog/2024-07-03-tmix-06/Xilem Emoji Picker.png b/content/blog/2024-07-03-tmix-06/Xilem Emoji Picker.png
diff --git a/content/blog/2024-07-03-tmix-06/index.md b/content/blog/2024-07-03-tmix-06/index.md
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
++++
+title = "This Month in Xilem, June 2024"
+authors = ["Daniel McNab"]
++++
+
+We released [Vello 0.2.0][] at the start of the month, which included some key improvements discussed in previous months' updates.
+We also merged initial handling of Emoji ([vello#615][]), which supports glyphs which use the COLR specification (Apple's system emoji font does not use this format and so currently will not render).
+In-flight work includes an enhanced testing setup ([vello#610][]), GPU memory allocation robustness ([vello#606][]), and improved correctness for some unusual strokes ([vello#607][]).
+The [GPU-Friendly Stroke Expansion](https://github.com/linebender/gpu-stroke-expansion-paper) paper has been accepted to [High Performance Graphics 2024](https://www.highperformancegraphics.org/2024/index.html), and will be presented in Denver on July 26.
+A revised draft of the paper is published on [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00127).
+
+<figure>
+
+<img src="Xilem Emoji Picker.png" style="height: auto" alt="Screenshot of an app, containing a 4x4 grid of labelled Emoji, zoom in and out buttons and pagination controls. 'cat face with wry smile' is selected" height="1132" width = "863">
+
+<figcaption>
+
+A toy Emoji viewer example ([xilem#420][]) running on Android.
+This example uses system fonts, so has limited platform support because of the caveat mentioned above.
+
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+[xilem#310][] brought in some new ideas about how Xilem Core can be structured, which enables support for specialised kinds of `View`, such as for window properties.
+`Adapt` views built on this were used to create an [Elm](https://elm-lang.org/)-inspired example in [xilem#401][], showing the flexibility of the Xilem architecture.
+Philipp Mildenberger has been prolific in his work on Xilem, as a co-author of the new Xilem Core, and in adapting Xilem Web to use it.
+He also worked to bring support for `OneOf` views to Xilem Core in [xilem#394][] - these were previously only supported in Xilem Web.
+
+Masonry's observability support has also been improved, with automatic tracing to a temporary file in debug builds added in [xilem#384][].
+[xilem#396][] implements [rfcs#6][], changing the architecture of Masonry to make it easier to write new features and tests.
+
+There was also some excellent community engagement with Xilem in June.
+Veniamin Ilmer has created an open source [Minesweeper game](https://github.com/veniamin-ilmer/minesweeper_xilem/) using Xilem.
+The discussion on Zulip (in [#xilem > Minesweeper converted from Iced to Xilem](https://xi.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/354396-xilem/topic/Minesweeper.20converted.20from.20Iced.20to.20Xilem)) has been very useful in guiding areas for improvement.
+
+<figure>
+
+<img style="height: auto" src="Minesweeper.png" alt="A window titled Minesweeper, with text in the top-left 'Mines: 82', a top-center button with a neutral ASCII emoticon, and a board represented by a grid of buttons 30 wide and 16 tall, where some buttons are replaced with colour labels containing digits, and some buttons contain an exclamation mark." height="589" width = "931">
+
+<figcaption>
+
+Screenshot by Veniamin Ilmer of their Minesweeper game, used under the [Apache 2.0](https://github.com/veniamin-ilmer/minesweeper_xilem/blob/main/LICENSE) license.
+
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+Following on from May, Olivier wrote and published a [report](@/blog/2024-06-15-rustnl-2024-unconference.md) on our experience of the RustNL unconference.
+This led to some useful discussion online - see [the zulip thread](https://xi.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/181284-blogging/topic/Draft.20-.20Report.20on.20the.20RustNL.202024.20Conference/near/444974910) corresponding with that post for links.
+We are now in the final month of the [May-July 2024 roadmap](@/blog/2024-06-17-roadmap-may-2024.md).
+In the intervening time much of the work has been started or completed, although there have been some changes of priorities.
+I expect that we will soon be looking at prioritising items on our [long-term roadmap](@/wiki/long-term-roadmap.md).
+
+[xilem#310]:https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/310
+[xilem#384]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/384
+[xilem#394]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/394
+[xilem#396]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/396
+[xilem#401]:https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/401
+[xilem#418]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/418
+[xilem#420]: https://github.com/linebender/xilem/pull/420
+[vello 0.2.0]: https://github.com/linebender/vello/releases/tag/v0.2.0
+
+[vello#606]: https://github.com/linebender/vello/pull/606
+[vello#607]: https://github.com/linebender/vello/pull/607
+[vello#610]: https://github.com/linebender/vello/pull/610
+[vello#615]: https://github.com/linebender/vello/pull/615
+
+[rfcs#6]: https://github.com/linebender/rfcs/pull/6
diff --git a/templates/shortcodes/high_res_image.html b/templates/shortcodes/high_res_image.html