C# Implementation

[DJGosnell]

I'd like to start a quick discussion about the C# implementation and potential goals. I was initially intending to have the #11 PR be multi-pronged, but it was merged already into the main branch so I think here is a better place to handle discussion.

Targeting

What is the target of the .NET implementation? If we can target the current .NET Core, we gain significant performance features which is available in the newer and current release of the language. If we need to maintain compatibility with the older frameworks, we can do that, it just significantly complicates the logic as some features don't exist in the older .NET Frameworks.

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/dotnet-standard#versions

Performance

There are several dotnet systems which can be used to help performance out here I believe. Here are just a few initial items I see.

• Inlined methods were merged with C# Performance #11
• Utilizing dotnet methodology for readonly struct
• Review options for internally reusing Lists or direct array assignment.
  • The usage of Lists List<List<Point64>> (and such) makes the management of the lists easy, but it eats through memory quickly especially when the list's backing arrays are constantly re-sizing. I am doing research about some potential other methods of handling this.

Consistency

How opposed would you be to making the C# code consistent between the different clipper CS files?
Clipper.Core.cs, Clipper.Offset.cs and Clipper.cs uses two spaces while Clipper.Engine.cs uses mostly tabs with some spaces mixed in.

Can I make these consistent between each of the source files? Tabs or spaces don't matter much to me. The dotnet community has mostly centered around spaces, but any good IDE worth its salt will work just fine either way. The mixture just becomes irritating sometimes and this seems like a good time to address it.

There is even a standard system in place to have the dotnet command format which I can setup to keep the formatting consistent.

[AngusJohnson]

Hi DJ.

First, thank you for your feedback. And in case you're wondering about how careful you need to be with it 😜, just about all my programming is done in Delphi and I accept that my C# knowledge is very limited. So, while I'm keen to host both C# and C++ Clipper2 ports here, I will be relying on those with proficiency in these languages. In fact I'm looking for a couple of poeple with considerable proficiency in either C# or C++ to take the lead in managing those ports here. Are you interested 😁?

What is the target of the .NET implementation?

Good question. It's a balance as you obviously understand between getting the performance from newer ,NET features vs compatibility with older frameworks. My hope would be to have Clipper2 useful to a significant majority of C# users (eg >70%).

Performance

This is critically important as long as changes are supported by target .NET implementations as above.

Can I make these consistent between each of the source files

I'm all for consistency and appreciate that this has been compromised by my focus on coding. Go for it 😁.

[DJGosnell]

In fact I'm looking for a couple of poeple with considerable proficiency in either C# or C++ to take the lead in managing those ports here. Are you interested 😁?

I cant say that I have a lot of free time lately, but I can certainly help out when I have some time.

Good question. It's a balance as you obviously understand between getting the performance from newer ,NET features vs compatibility with older frameworks. My hope would be to have Clipper2 useful to a significant majority of C# users (eg >70%).

I think that we can try to target .NET Standard 2.0 for now and .NET 5.0. If we target .NET Standard 2.0, we can support all the way back to .NET Framework 4.6.1 and supporting .NET 5 also provides us some features we can use for performance purposes moving forward.

I would like to address packaging and releases. .NET has a standard packaging system called Nuget and it increases visibility for projects as that is how most of .NET libraries are consumed. It makes sense to release these the .NET version in the manner, but we would have to address versioning of the library for releases. Do we want to issue this library as Clipper2 Version 1.0? Someone already took the Clipper Nuget package name so that makes things a little more difficult.

[AngusJohnson]

but I can certainly help out when I have some time.

Great. And thanks for all your help so far.

NET has a standard packaging system called Nuget.

Yes, that a good idea. It seems that the Clipper Nuget package is actually a package of my original Clipper code. I could ask the package owner to retire it, but I suspect the better way is to post a Clipper2 package.

Do we want to issue this library as Clipper2 Version 1.0?

Probably, but I'm open to suggestions.

[Methuselah96]

Just stumbled upon Clipper2 and am very excited as a long-time Clipper user.

I am actually coworkers with the package owner of the current Clipper NuGet package, so if there was some action to take with it, I'm sure we could work it out. Regardless, I think a Clipper2 package makes the most the most sense.

Any idea of how long it will be until Clipper2 gets released on NuGet?

[AngusJohnson]

Hi Nathan.

Any idea of how long it will be until Clipper2 gets released on NuGet?

I'm hoping within the next couple of months.
However my previous estimates on the delivery of Clipper2 have been widely wrong so who knows?
It still needs a little more tweaking, and beta testing, and then documentation will need a major overhaul.

[brinkdinges]

Hi Angus,

I just found Clipper2 and I'm very happy to see that you're still actively working on it. I currently have version 1 copied into a single file in my project, so I'd love to consume the new version as a NuGet package. Have you made progress towards publishing it there? What needs to be done to get there?

[Methuselah96]

I spy https://www.nuget.org/packages/Clipper2. 👀 Giving it a spin to see if it's ready for use.

[Methuselah96]

Tried it out and it seems to work beautifully. Thanks!

[AngusJohnson]

What needs to be done to get there?

Hi Peter. Nothing now as I've just uploaded Clipper2 to NuGet!
However, it still needs to pass NuGet validation, so it won't appear immediately there.

[brinkdinges]

Very cool, thanks! It's already live:
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Clipper2

I see it's going to take me some work to implement the new version, now that IntPoint, Polygon are gone and Clipper is now static. Is the 32-bit version (IntPoint) now gone? I was using that because it was 10% faster than longs, if I remember correctly.

[AngusJohnson]

Is the 32-bit version (IntPoint) now gone? I was using that because it was 10% faster than longs.

Yes, it's gone. But nevertheless Clipper2 is a lot faster than Clipper1.

[XRay3D]

I also used 32 bit. Perhaps in C++ the choice of bitness can be given to users. And make all the code template and create aliases for 64 bit for compatibility.