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Unfortunately, that reply reflects many of the problems I highlighted in my comment. You have missed the point. I'm aware that Acrylic controls are XAML only.

Unfortunately, that reply reflects many of the problems I highlighted in my comment. You have missed the point. I'm aware that Acrylic controls are XAML only. I'm referring, though, to the UI support itself: glass, blending, the small amount of noise added, etc. In Windows 10, glass is not supported any more - except it is, because it is used in Acrylic. How? Well, using the same APIs as glass in Win7, but with small tweaks that are undocumented. Some people including myself have attempted to reverse engineer some of the new flags that are required. It looks likely that Acrylica can be completed done in a plain old WinAPI app using glass and a Direct2D canvas - except that some of that is undocumented. If I'm wrong here, and you can point me at non-.Net API documentation, please do. > Complaining that you need WinRT to access modern UI effects seems a bit like complaining you need DirectX to access modern GPUs That's not what I said. You do not need WinRT to access modern UI effects, but Microsoft seem to be requiring to you to use WinRT to access modern UI effects. That is, requiring you to use their libraries, their development tools, and so forth. It is not open, and it is anti-competitive.

WorldMaker 9y ago
WinRT is that "small tweak" combination of Direct2D and "WinAPI". It's turtles all the way down, WinRT is the modern COM and modern WinAPI, the WinAPI is now WinRT. The documentation site I pointed to defaults to C# (.NET) but is the exact same site supporting C++ and there is a dropdown in the sidebar to switch between views. The C++/WinRT library I linked to started outside of Microsoft (as "moderncpp"), was acquired, and is still open source. Microsoft isn't requiring their own development tools to build WinRT (there's also open source React Native off the top of my head), it's just that so far not a lot of non-Microsoft developments tools have targeted/needed to target WinRT to date. They aren't requiring you to use their libraries, they are requiring you to use their modern API (WinRT).

WorldMaker 9y ago

WinRT is that "small tweak" combination of Direct2D and "WinAPI". It's turtles all the way down, WinRT is the modern COM and modern WinAPI, the WinAPI is now WinRT. The documentation site I pointed to defaults to C# (.NET) but is the exact same site supporting C++ and there is a dropdown in the sidebar to switch between views. The C++/WinRT library I linked to started outside of Microsoft (as "moderncpp"), was acquired, and is still open source. Microsoft isn't requiring their own development tools to build WinRT (there's also open source React Native off the top of my head), it's just that so far not a lot of non-Microsoft developments tools have targeted/needed to target WinRT to date. They aren't requiring you to use their libraries, they are requiring you to use their modern API (WinRT).