Skia Graphics Engine

Open source graphics library written in C++

skia.googlesource.com/skia

Written inC++Operating systemAndroid, iOS, Linux, macOS, WindowsTypeGraphics libraryLicenseNew BSD LicenseWebsiteskia.org
skia.googlesource.com/skia

The Skia Graphics Engine or Skia is an open-source 2D graphics library written in C++. Skia abstracts away platform-specific graphics APIs (which differ from one to another).^[1] Skia Inc. originally developed the library; Google acquired it in 2005,^[2] and then released the software as open source licensed under the New BSD free software license in 2008.

Overview

In order to stay multi-platform, Skia supports several (platform-dependent) back-ends. These include:

CPU software rasterization
Portable Document Format (PDF) output
GPU-accelerated rendering by using:^[3]
- ANGLE backed, which translates OpenGL ES calls into vendor's native APIs
- Vulkan, and Metal.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
XML Paper Specification (XPS)

Skia is most similar in purpose to Cairo or Pathfinder (meaning that it focuses on drawing) rather than to other more elaborate APIs like that one of Qt that provide their own widgets and UI description language etc.^[4]

Application

The library is used as of 2023^[update] in Google Chrome, ChromeOS, ChromiumOS, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Android, Firefox OS, Flutter,^[5] Avalonia (from Alpha 4), LibreOffice (from version 7.0) and RAD Studio^[6](since version 12.0).

Supported platforms

Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10
macOS 10.10.5 or later
iOS 8 or later
Android 4.1 (JellyBean) or later
Ubuntu 14.04+, Debian 8+, openSUSE 13.3+, or Fedora Linux 24+
Web Browsers^[7]

Etymology

Skia is a romanisation of the word 'shadow' in Greek (Σκιά).

History

Skia Inc, developers of the Skia Graphics Engine, was founded in 2004 by Mike Reed and Cary Clark in Chapel Hill North Carolina, before being acquired by Google in 2005.^[8]

References

^ "Skia Graphics Library". skia.org. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
^ Malik, Om (2 Sep 2008). "Google Open Sources Skia Graphics Engine". gigaom. Retrieved 31 August 2011.
^ "Specialized Builds". Skia. Retrieved 2022-01-18.
^ "The Skia 2D Graphics Library From Google - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
^ "Skia Documentation". skia.org. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
^ "RAD Studio". embarcadero.com.
^ "CanvasKit - Skia + WebAssembly". skia.org. Retrieved 2021-09-03.
^ "Inside Google's Chapel Hill outpost: A growing success story | WRAL TechWire". 2017-05-24. Retrieved 2021-10-27.