Re: Using/requiring Cairo

[Paul]

On 06/26/2017 02:36 PM, David Kastrup wrote:

> > Interestingly, "Cairo uses hardware acceleration when available."
> Well, to be fair this just concerns display backends.  So it might be
> interesting for Denemo and Frescobaldi interfacing but will not
> otherwise affect output.  I think it would be quite interesting for
> creating "live" output "rolls" for editing.

Ah, good to know.  That would indeed be cool if it could be used by 
front-ends like that.

> Yes.  That is what suggests eventual retirement of the existing backends
> to be an option that could end up reducing the amount of ongoing
> developer effort for keeping the backends in uniformly coherent shape.
>
> Cairo doesn't do stuff like skylines and page layout, so finding good
> ways for fudging stuff together will still be necessary.

I assume users would still be able to make their own stencils (or 
equivalent cairo data structures), via the guile-cairo wrapper or 
otherwise.  Also it would be good to still be able to include ids or 
other metadata in svg output.  Just to put those things on the radar.

-Paul