Re: Anybody seen Cairo (formerly Xr)?

[Banlu Kemiyatorn]

Fred Kiefer wrote:

> Could you share this backends with us? The Cairo API is really close 
> to what your GNUstep backends have to implement, still it would be a 
> waste of effort if each GNUstep programmer would undergo this task by 
> herself. So lets share the work and when we have a full working Cairo 
> backend report it back the Cairo group to get a bit of publisity for 
> GNUstep.
>
> Fred
Sure, but actually I just start working on it yesterday. I expected to 
make it work for testing (only) by this Friday.
(Well, all the code is in my head and I just have to write them down, so 
let's jump into the discussion now if you wish)
I'll try to make the code available as soon as possible. But it would be 
nicer if I can spend time shaping things
rather busying doing CVS stuffs for something unstable/unusable. Pls 
note that even I've started the coding part already
but the thruth is I didn't even run the test code of Cairo yet because I 
am doing this on Darwin and its X11 can't
display Cairo. (I compiled Cairo at office on Debian, but now I am at 
home and just set the DISPLAY didn't
make things work. I need another version of X11 on my Darwin, RENDER 
issue, I guess) However if anyone
is interested, you can talk to me in irc. I'm lastlife in #gnustep or 
#cairo in case that you hate someone at #gnustep
or vice-versa (freenode).

Anyway, I don't think we should expect anything from Cairo any time soon 
because 1) it is not so stable AFAIK
due to its early state of development. 2) ART is cool enough, it is fast 
and portable and not yet Cairo is portable
as in its goal since right now it  requires a recent version of RENDER. 
(You'll have to manually comment out some
functions to make it to work without RENDER, ie. direct rendering into 
frame buffer) But I personally believe
that Cairo is the final way to go for X11 (for GPU & hardware 
acceleration, thus, not now)