Cairo [was: rawhide report: 20050621 changes]

Tarjei Knapstad tarjei.knapstad at predichem.com
Wed Jun 22 08:26:11 UTC 2005


On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 02:46, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 07:02 -0400, Build System wrote:
> 
> > cairo-0.5.1-1
> > -------------
> > * Mon Jun 20 2005 Kristian Høgsberg <krh at redhat.com> 0.5.1-1
> > - Update to cairo 0.5.1.
> > - Remove gtk-doc files, since --disable-gtk-doc doesn't work.
> > - Disable gtk-doc and add freetype and fontconfig BuildRequires.
> 
> I'm curious to know what cairo means in terms of performance for users.
> 
> I've read some really good stuff about it, but it all seems to rely on
> "taking advantage of display hardware acceleration when available (eg.
> through the X Render Extension or OpenGL)" (to quote from the
> cairographics.org web site).
> 
> What does this mean for users without hardware acceleration?
> What does this mean for users with NVIDIA and ATI cards who don't have
> support for 3D rendering because current open source drivers aren't
> offering support for this?
> 

It means you won't get accelerated graphics :)

I think the whole point of Cairo is that it's a common graphics
framework with multiple backends. If your application renders graphics
using Cairo you automatically get support for rendering to:

* The X window system
* OpenGL
* The Win32 API
* Postscript
* PDF
* SVG
* etc...

So in theory at least it's a graphics portability layer. You can build
your application for windows just by selecting Win32 rendering, users
will get hardware accelerated output if they have support for it or
normal X rendering if not and so forth. Implementing printing and PS/PDF
output is also a breeze for the application developer as he/she can just
render using these backends.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is what Cairo is meant for -
fast vector graphics with multiple backends making life easier for
application developers, and life faster for users with hardware
accelerated graphics. Those without it shouldn't notice any difference.

--
Tarjei




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