I’m writing an interface that features a large (~50000px width) “canvas”-type area that is used to display a lot of data in a fairly novel way. This involves lots of lines, rectangles, and text. The user can scroll around to explore the entire canvas.
At the moment I’m just using a standard Canvas panel with various Shapes placed on it. This is nice and easy to do: construct a shape, assign some coordinates, and attach it to the Canvas. Unfortunately, it’s pretty slow (to construct the children, not to do the actual rendering).
I’ve looked into some alternatives, it’s a bit intimidating. I don’t need anything fancy – just the ability to efficiently construct and place objects in a coordinate plane. If all I get are lines, colored rectangles, and text, I’ll be happy.
Do I need Geometry instances inside of Geometry Groups inside of GeometryDrawings inside of some Panel container?
Note: I’d like to include text and graphics (i.e. colored rectangles) in the same space, if possible.
Shapes are fairly heavy-weight. You should probably look into using graphics paths. Those are much more efficient when the user doesn’t need to interact with individual parts of the drawing – and sometimes even then.