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(a)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