Things are boring. Boring, but good.
Collateralized Technical Debt Obligations
The Android port of the toolkit was supposed to share C++ code with the iOS version. It never really did. This is the fundamental problem between iOS and Android. It hurts the Android version and it's holding back other ports.
On Android we have a hard line between Java and C++ (JNI). When I ported things the first time, I made a copy for Android and then hacked as needed. Naturally, the versions diverged between platforms.
I've merged the C++ cores back together and introduced that hard line between Obj-C and C++ on iOS. This should let me fix bugs for both platforms at the same time. I'm excited. In a boring way.
The Port No One Wants
All of this gives me an iOS version based on a solid C++ core. No new functionality, not going to be faster or slower. And it's going to have bugs for a while.
Which is to say, it's not a port anyone's excited about, but it's vital. Once that's done, I get back to the good stuff.
Good Stuff Part I
Android's behind on new functionality. The whole Sample/Loader approach, which is working so well in 2.6, is only on iOS. Before I port it, I need to clean up some old things (QuadPagingLayer), remove stuff I've replaced (QuadImagesLayer) and make sure those deprecations can be supported.
That's more fun than it sounds, I swear. The QuadPagingLayer is used for loading all sorts of data objects and its replacement, based on the new Sampler/Loader, will fix a host of problems.
On the more exciting front, there's elevation support. It's always been a mess on iOS and never worked on Android. It'll be fun to fix that definitively.
Other good stuff will follow, including but not limited to, Metal for iOS.
