Re: Cairo

[David Kastrup]

Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> writes:

>>> For those who are interested: here is an updated version of my
>>> cairo patch.
>
> Excellent, thanks!
>
>>> If we kick out ghostscript the \postscript markup will die a lonely
>>> death.
>> 
>> I'd retain the PostScript backend for special purposes.
>
> +1
>
>> A trickier question is how to use it from the command line then
>> since by far its most important use case is as an intermediate to
>> bitmaps or PDF rather than as final format.
>
> It's not clear to me what you mean.  The PostScript backend doesn't
> call ghostscript for creating EPS or PS files, right?  So if we switch
> to Cairo for PDF creation, ghostscript won't be called directly.  Am I
> missing something?

Yes, a "by default" or two.  Like

    So if we switch to Cairo for PDF creation by default, ghostscript
    won't be called directly by default.

But the non-default use case of PDF/bitmap generation via Ghostscript is
the most relevant for the PostScript backend: I don't think many people
use the PostScript backend because they themselves would want to work
with PS files rather than let LilyPond use them as intermediates.

>> A lower-maintenance option (longterm) would be to ultimately generate
>> PostScript via Cairo too and make \postscript pass the information to
>> Cairo (I presume that Cairo can be given backend-specific code).
>
> Sounds sensible.

-- 
David Kastrup