Is GDI+ just a layer on top of GDI, or something new?

Question

When GDI+ came out, I remember all the brouhaha about how it was the "new, faster, better" way to display stuff in Windows. But everytime I looked at it, it seemed to me that it was really just a COM wrapper around GDI.

Is that true? Or is GDI+ really an independent graphical library that simply shares some paradigms with GDI?

Personally, I'm not sure how it could be independent, but I never saw a definite statement one way or another.

Answer 1

GDI+ is built over GDI, and adds several more features. For example, GDI+ adds support for transparency, anti-aliasing bitmap stretching, etc...

GDI+ is mainly a Object based API, and GDI is a function api. Most of the functionalities in GDI+ are not hardware optimized (there are handled by software), to contrast with GDI. For example, in GDI, BitBlt is handled directly by hardware. GDI+ bitmap painting functions are not.

GDI+ is a powerful API, but be careful with its performance.

GDI+ is available in C++, COM and .NET