14 DAY TRIAL // A fresh development milestone of Paint.NET 3.5 is now available for download, tailored to the latest iteration of the Windows client. The Alpha build of Paint.NET version 3.5 leverages the DirectWrite application programming interface that ships by default with Windows 7 for the Text tool. Of course that only users of Windows 7 will be able to take advantage of Paint.NET’s adaptation to the successor of Windows Vista, while those running previous releases of Windows will have to content themselves with a version of the graphics design solution using GDI. This because only Windows 7 brings to the table a new font and text rendering system, namely DirectWrite.
One of the inherent benefits of embracing DirectWrite is that Windows 7 users will be able to benefit from faster text rendering. “This is currently due to important architectural differences from GDI. With DirectWrite, I can render using multiple threads (performance scaling), while also not blocking the UI thread from drawing (mutexing). GDI can only render text on 1 thread at a time, and that also includes the thread responsible for the UI. DirectWrite can also benefit from GPU acceleration when things are set up correctly with Direct2D (Paint.NET only uses the software rasterization capabilities right now, but in the future who knows!),” a member of the Paint.NET project revealed.
Essentially, the latest alpha build of Paint.NET v3.5 introduces a new level of performance for the application’s Text tool. Simply accessing the font list dropdown in Paint.NET is now an instantaneous move in the latest alpha build of Paint.NET v3.5 , compared to the GDI, which made the font previews appear slowly, offering an inferior user experience. Additional performance enhancements also impact the lines of text typed onto the canvas.
Another improvement delivered by DirectWrite is superior “quality text rendering. DirectWrite implements what is called “y-direction antialiasing.” The short story is that GDI apparently only does antialiasing on the horizontal axis. It can also position characters with sub-pixel accuracy … in other words, GDI uses integers and DirectWrite uses floating point,” the Paint.NET project representative stated.
Of course that DirectWrite is by no means limited to the Alpha build (build 3509) of Paint.NET v3.5. All third-party developers that are building apps for Windows 7 can leverage the API. “DirectWrite is one of the new additions to the DirectX family of APIs in Windows 7. DirectWrite enables better readability, adds support for a large variety of languages and scripts, and in conjunction with Direct2D provides superior rendering performance for Windows applications. Applications can also use DirectWrite with GDI and carry forward existing investments in the Win32 code base,” explained Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc.
Paint.NET 3.5 Alpha is available for download here.