New Direct APIs in Windows 7

Direct2D and DirectWrite are two new APIs provided with Windows 7.

Direct2D is a hardware-accelerated, immediate-mode 2-D graphics API that provides high performance and high-quality rendering for 2-D geometry, bitmaps, and text. The Direct2D API is designed to interoperate with existing code that uses GDI, GDI+, or Direct3D. Direct2D uses hardware acceleration where possible and offers better rendering than GDI. Note, it's not a managed driver but a native API that works with C and C++.

DirectWrite is a new text renderer that is device independent, can can use ClearText text rendering and OpenType fonts. It is GDI compatible in layout and rendering so providing an migration path for older legacy code. I spent a number of years doing things with GDI, (though never GDI+), back in the late 90s. GDI is now obsolete but of course exists in a lot of code. Both APIs are provided as COM interfaces and the new look MSDN has quote a few examples of their use.