Skia Graphics Engine

Skia Graphics Engine
Original author(s)	Skia Inc.
Developer(s)	Google
Repository	skia.googlesource.com/skia ;
Written in	C++
Operating system	Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows
Type	Graphics library
License	New BSD License
Website	skia.org; skia.googlesource.com/skia

The Skia Graphics Engine or Skia is an open-source 2D graphics library written in C++. Skia abstracts away platform-specific graphics APIs (which differ from one to another).^[1] Skia Inc. originally developed the library; Google acquired it in 2005,^[2] and then released the software as open source licensed under the New BSD free software license in 2008.

Overview

In order to stay multi-platform, Skia supports several (platform-dependent) back-ends. These include:

CPU software rasterization
Portable Document Format (PDF) output
GPU-accelerated rendering by using:^[3]
- ANGLE backend, which translates OpenGL ES calls into vendor's native APIs
- Vulkan, and Metal.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
XML Paper Specification (XPS)

Skia is most similar in purpose to Cairo or Pathfinder (meaning that it focuses on drawing) rather than to other more elaborate APIs like that of Qt that provide their own widgets and UI description language etc.^[4]

Application

The library is used as of 2023^[update] in Google Chrome, ChromeOS, ChromiumOS, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Android, Firefox OS, Flutter, Ladybird^[5] Avalonia (from Alpha 4), LibreOffice (from version 7.0) and RAD Studio^[6](since version 12.0).

Supported platforms

Windows 10, 11
macOS 10.15 or later
iOS 12 or later
Android 4.3 (JellyBean) or later
Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, openSUSE 15.2+, or Fedora Linux 32+
Web Browsers^[7]

Etymology

Skia is a romanisation of the word 'shadow' in Greek (Σκιά).

History

Skia Inc, developers of the Skia Graphics Engine, was founded in 2004 by Mike Reed and Cary Clark in Chapel Hill North Carolina, before being acquired by Google in 2005.^[8]