Porting Geonkick to Windows

28-10-2023

Since September, Geonkick has been ported to Windows. Initially, the DSP part was ported and tested as a VST3 plugin without a UI. Subsequently, a more challenging task was undertaken: porting the GUI to Windows. Fortunately, there was a stroke of luck because Cairo was drawn well using the Win32 surface, eliminating the need to develop a graphics backend for the Geonkick core GUI for the Windows platform. Instead, only the layer responsible for interacting with WinAPI, creating windows, and handling window messages such as mouse presses, mouse moves, and paint events was implemented.

Unexpectedly, progress was smoother than anticipated, and now Geonkick functions as a VST3 plugin under Windows, with the GUI approaching stability. However, there are still some issues that need addressing, such as shading on certain buttons and fixing popup dialogs for save, export, and MIDI key widgets. Additionally, there are minor performance-related problems in event processing that may require optimization. Nevertheless, for now, it appears that there are no other issues that have been discovered at this stage that would be severe enough to block this porting.