QuickDraw GX

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "QuickDraw GX" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

QuickDraw GX was a replacement for the QuickDraw (QD) 2D graphics engine and Printing Manager inside the classic Mac OS.^[1] Its underlying drawing platform was an object oriented, resolution-independent, retained mode system, making it much easier for programmers to perform common tasks (compared to the original QuickDraw). Additionally, GX added various curve-drawing commands that had been lacking from QD, as well as introducing TrueType as its basic font system.^[2]

While GX addressed many of the problems that QD had, by the time it was made available, most developers had already developed their own solutions to these problems. GX also suffered from causing a number of incompatibilities in existing programs, notably those that had developed their own QD extensions. This, coupled with opposition from an important fraction of the developer market, especially PostScript owner Adobe, and a lack of communication from Apple about the benefits of GX and why users should adopt it, led to the technology being sidelined.

QuickDraw GX saw little development after its initial release and was formally "killed" with the purchase of NeXT and the eventual adoption of the Quartz imaging model in Mac OS X. Many of its component features lived on and are now standard in the current Macintosh platform; TrueType GX in particular has become a broadly used modern standard in the form of OpenType Variable Fonts.