Cairo [was: rawhide report: 20050621 changes]

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 10:26 +0200, Tarjei Knapstad wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 02:46, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 07:02 -0400, Build System wrote:

> > 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.

Don't get me wrong (and I'm not sure if you have).  I think Cairo is a
wonderful idea and I'm really looking forward to seeing what people do
with it.

What I'm wanting to know is will people without hardware acceleration be
worse off.  Are non-hw-accelerated users going to end up with a system
that runs something like non-hw-accelerated 3D (which really sucks, even
with a good processor)?  Or will the rendering on non-hw-accelerated
systems be quite good, and rendering with hw-accelerated systems will be
brilliant?

regards


R.
-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"