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GTK+ to Use Cairo Vector Engine

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the pretty-pictures dept.

Eugenia writes "GTK+ is now the first major toolkit to have added support for the Cairo 2D vector graphics library, which is designed to provide high-quality display and print output. GTK+ project leader Owen Taylor has commented on the X/GTK integration of Cairo. To put it in perspective, Cairo is similar to OSX's Quartz engine and Longhorn's Avalon (PPT analysis). The 3D hardware accelerated image compositing OpenGL part of Cairo will be provided by the Glitz library. Cairo is 'possible' to be part of Qt 4.x at a later date, according to Trolltech's Qt 4 technical preview document."

2 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Quartz is not vectorized by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Quartz handles vectors just fine: it's all PDF underneath which handles vectors just fine. Cocoa provides a number of classes to create and draw vectors images (ie: NSBezierPath).

    The Aqua interface elements (brushed metal, gel buttons, title bars, wtc) are bitmaps but that's not a limitation of quartz.

    Of course everything you see on the screen is eventually rasterized before being displayed - but that's a requirement for any display thats out puting to a CRT, LCD, etc.

  2. Re:Cairo vs Longhorn's Avalon by Osty · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmm...since Cairo is out and Avalon isn't, the Penguin now has a step up on Redmond in terms of graphics. Granted, Avalon includes some other spiffy 3d eye candy, but this is a first where the Linux GUI beats out the Windows one.

    What's your definition of "out"? From the Cairo download page, "Cairo is still under active development. The API is rapidly approaching stability, but is not quite there yet, so there is not yet any official "release" of cairo." So, Cairo is not a 1.0 release, or even a .01 release. Dev snapshots are available, in an unstable form (the API is "approaching" stability). How does this differ from the available technology preview of Avalon (aside from the openness of the source, of course)?

    Both are still in pre-release stages. Both are available in a publicly-consumable form even though they've not reached API stability yet. Declaring one or the other the "winner" is still premature.

    Oh, yeah, and Avalon will be available on XP and 2k3, not just Longhorn.