Re: Using/requiring Cairo

[David Kastrup]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> writes:

>> The first step would likely just involve moving to Cairo data
>> structures while keeping most of the current code except where the
>> code would duplicate Cairo API calls in a reasonably straightforward
>> way.
>
> Sounds very sensible.  Looking around for other PDF generation
> libraries, we don't have much other choices, it seems...

Cairo is not really a PDF generation library.  Its main advantage would
be that it buys us a reasonable representation of graphical objects and
their manipulation.  The main question mark would concern font handling
but I think it integrates with FreeType as well as Pango.

It would likely be harder to mess around with things like Woff font
support in SVG but the overall consistency and possibilities for better
hand-off and post-processing of the typesetting results would be quite
improved.

-- 
David Kastrup