An interesting project called the “Anti Grain Geometry Project”, or AGG Project, aims to develop a library for detailed development of graphics algorithms, without any of the constraints of libraries like OpenGL.

Anti-Grain Geometry is designed as a set of loosely coupled algorithms and class templates united with a common idea, so that all the components can be easily combined. Also, the template based design allows you to replace any part of the library without the necessity to modify a single byte in the existing code.

Also AGG is designed keeping in mind extensibility and flexibility. Basically I just wanted to create a toolkit that would allow me (and anyone else) to add new fancy algorithms very easily.

Aimed primarily at development of algorithms, the author concedes that working with it can be a bit difficult.  However, the results he shows in just basic antialiasing work show some great promise.

via Anti-Grain Geometry – Introduction.