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Comment by WorldMaker

23 days ago

> own separate implementation of DirectWrite for some god forsaken reason.

That reason I sort of understand: The Cold War that DirectX can't be bothered to support WinRT directly is fascinating from outside, and also just really, really stupid. DirectX is ancient COM. WinRT is essentially modern COM 3.0. But if DirectX supported WinRT's version of COM then "Oh No, those idiot and dirty C# and JS developers could use it directly" and where would the games industry be without excuses to force college graduates to use only the one true C++ like Stroustrup intended? /facepalm

For a library called DirectX they seem to really love being IndirectX. Someone in the Windows Division should have forced them onto the right path sooner, but Windows is too busy being in either the Azure or AI divisions these days to actually care about being a consistent OS and DirectX slipped into being protected by Xbox in ways that are backwards to how things were meant to work. (Xbox was supposed to be the way to encourage more software developed with DirectX not to protect more software developers from using DirectX directly.) That xkcd comic of Microsoft being a bunch of disconnected orgs in a Mexican standoff seems to apply here (directly).