Why is there no `drawText` on the `Canvas` interface?

# compose

[Mark]

Why is there no drawText on the Canvas interface?

[jw]

Seems like a layering problem. Drawing would then have to involve knowledge of the entire text stack. Ultimately text and a font bottom out in drawing commands.

It's like asking why there is no drawJpeg or drawSvg. You want something at a higher level of abstraction to handle the high-level semantics of the thing, and then issue low-level drawing calls to the canvas.

[Mark]

Hmm, I guess so. I noticed there’s a drawText extension function on DrawScope so was just wondering why there wouldn’t also be a Canvas.drawText extension function.

[jw]

DrawScope is at a much higher level of abstraction since you're above the layout system now which would be required for a text engine to do things like wrapping

[Mark]

I’ve got some custom drawing logic (mostly `Path`s but also some shapes and text). Should I be building that on top of Canvas or DrawScope? It’s certainly a lot easier to do the latter, since I no longer need to deal with Paint (and especially not Android-only TextPaint) and no longer need to dip into Canvas.nativeCanvas. OTOH, for the caller, DrawScope, I guess, is more tricky to set up being a higher level of abstraction. BTW, I don’t need to do things like text wrapping. The only text is always one or two digits placed in a circle.

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

feel free to file a feature request