Alternatives

Endpoint doesn't force you to use its Canvas or Widget APIs. Any standard 2D graphics library that renders to an in-memory buffer works. Draw into the buffer, hand it to a DisplayController, SPI / I2C device, or the Endpoint Canvas as a bitmap source.

.NET

SkiaSharp

Full-featured 2D canvas with text, paths, gradients and image decoding. De-facto standard cross-platform drawing library for .NET; used inside Microsoft MAUI.

dotnet add package SkiaSharp
dotnet add package SkiaSharp.NativeAssets.Linux

using SkiaSharp;

using var bmp = new SKBitmap(240, 320, SKColorType.Rgb565, SKAlphaType.Opaque);
using var canvas = new SKCanvas(bmp);

canvas.Clear(SKColors.Black);
using var red = new SKPaint { Color = SKColors.Red, StrokeWidth = 2 };
canvas.DrawLine(10, 10, 230, 310, red);
canvas.DrawCircle(120, 160, 40, new SKPaint { Color = SKColors.Blue });
canvas.DrawText("Hello Endpoint", 10, 30,
    new SKPaint { Color = SKColors.White, TextSize = 20 });

spi.Write(bmp.Bytes);     // raw RGB565 to the display

Runtime footprint ≈ 10 MB (native Skia library).

ImageSharp

Pure-managed image processing: resize, encode, filter. No native dependencies. Great when you're decoding JPEGs or compositing images rather than drawing primitives interactively.

dotnet add package SixLabors.ImageSharp
dotnet add package SixLabors.ImageSharp.Drawing

using SixLabors.ImageSharp;
using SixLabors.ImageSharp.Drawing.Processing;
using SixLabors.ImageSharp.PixelFormats;

using var image = new Image<Bgr565>(240, 320);
image.Mutate(ctx => {
    ctx.Fill(Color.Black);
    ctx.DrawLine(Color.Red, 2, new PointF(10, 10), new PointF(230, 310));
    ctx.Fill(Color.Blue, new EllipsePolygon(120, 160, 40));
    ctx.DrawText("Hello Endpoint", font, Color.White, new PointF(10, 30));
});
image.CopyPixelDataTo(buffer);
spi.Write(buffer);

Microsoft.Maui.Graphics

Microsoft's cross-platform 2D API with a pluggable backend. Lightweight (~100 KB) if you only use the drawing primitives.

dotnet add package Microsoft.Maui.Graphics

using Microsoft.Maui.Graphics;

using var bitmap = new BitmapExportContext(240, 320);
ICanvas canvas = bitmap.Canvas;

canvas.FillColor = Colors.Black;
canvas.FillRectangle(0, 0, 240, 320);
canvas.StrokeColor = Colors.Red;
canvas.DrawLine(10, 10, 230, 310);

Python

Pillow

The standard Python imaging library. Prebuilt wheels for 64-bit ARM; no cross-compilation needed.

pip install Pillow

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

img = Image.new("RGB", (240, 320), "black")
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
draw.line((10, 10, 230, 310), fill="red", width=2)
draw.ellipse((80, 120, 160, 200), fill="blue")
draw.text((10, 30), "Hello Endpoint", fill="white")

spi.write(img.tobytes())

numpy + matplotlib

For scientific and data-visualisation workloads, numpy and matplotlib work the same way they do on a desktop: render into an off-screen canvas and flush the resulting pixel buffer.

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("Agg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(2.4, 3.2), dpi=100)
ax.plot([1, 2, 3], [4, 1, 7])
fig.canvas.draw()
spi.write(fig.canvas.tostring_rgb())

C/C++

The built-in Canvas ships inside libendpoint and covers most needs with zero extra dependencies. If you want something else, link any standard C/C++ 2D toolkit (Cairo, STB image, Skia C API) and feed the resulting pixel buffer to the display the same way.

// Cairo example (apt install libcairo2-dev)
#include <cairo/cairo.h>
cairo_surface_t* surf = cairo_image_surface_create(CAIRO_FORMAT_RGB16_565, 240, 320);
cairo_t* cr = cairo_create(surf);
cairo_set_source_rgb(cr, 1, 0, 0);
cairo_move_to(cr, 10, 10); cairo_line_to(cr, 230, 310); cairo_stroke(cr);
spi.Write(cairo_image_surface_get_data(surf), 240 * 320 * 2);

Choose based on what you need

Need	Pick
Lines / text / circles on the panel or an external display	Canvas (ours, smallest footprint)
Vector paths, SVG, complex text layout, gradients	SkiaSharp (.NET)
Image resize / encode / filter	ImageSharp (.NET) · Pillow (Python)
Already-written MAUI.Graphics code	Microsoft.Maui.Graphics (.NET)
Charts, plots, scientific plots	matplotlib (Python)

Canvas is the lightweight default; the alternatives let you reach deeper when the problem calls for it.