[analognoise]

LOL. My favorite part of it was the last line:

"More research into ImGUI style UIs could lead to huge gains in productivity."

Don't tell this cat that the research on this stuff goes back >40 years and that the introductory chapter of any book on computer graphics would have talked about all of this. Not like it would help him - he hasn't read anything about it, didn't even do a cursory Google search. Sheesh. A low, low bar.

[tom_]

Do you have any recommended links?

[analognoise]

I do!

One of my favorite is "Don't Fidget with Widgets, Draw!" (https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-91-6.pdf) It's modern enough to be understandable, and while it's referencing Ezd (a Scheme drawing system) it greatly influenced Tk (which is still used in all kinds of heavy-hitting EDA software).

That one's only been around for 28 years though (well, the paper was published in 1991, so code was before that...) but let's go further:

The drawing system(s) that greatly influenced Ezd came largely from Xerox PARC, such as ALTO: https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/xerox-alto-source-code...

There's code in there for a vector drawing program (in 1980!), as well as interacting widgets. Let's go back further...

Finally, we have to mention the Mother of All Demos, in 1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Which if you haven't watched MOAD before, give it a spin. It will still blow your mind, but the interactive graphical drawing mechanisms will be recognizable.

Also, this "paint the screen every time" method is how a tremendous number of people who cut their teeth on DOS did things on the screen. DOS release date: 1981. So you don't have to have been an academic (which I am NOT) to have tried these techniques while solving practical problems.

As far as books: Computer Graphics Principles and Practice in C (later editions use C#/C++/etc. - the ideas are the same)

The 1995/96 one talks about retained mode graphics directly. That book has been standard in "intro computer graphics" courses for as long as it's been out. So at least 20+ years it's been the "start here" book.

So yea, this stuff has been around for a while...