[Cairo] PNG backend for cairo?

[Abraham Egnor]

...which would then have to propagate to all of the language bindings, and
anything else that wants to be backend-agnostic, and...

David Morse <svref at yahoo.com> writes:
>
>./configure --with-png=yes ?
>
>Abraham Egnor wrote:
>> I'd prefer that it be in its own library, less because of dependencies
>> than because it keeps the interface clean.  I suspect that confusion is
>a
>> non-issue; potential cairo users will be smart enough to read
>> documentation, I'm pretty sure.  Keeping backends that don't require
>> internal functionality in separate libraries also scales much better.
>> 
>> Abe
>> 
>> Carl Worth <cworth at east.isi.edu> writes:
>> 
>>>As most of you know, I rarely use cairo for more than trivially simple
>>>demonstrations. But, since I'm getting pretty good at those, I'm
>>>tempted to make them even more trivial.
>>>
>>>In order to do so, I'm tempted to add a PNG backend to cairo. (I
>>>actually think this would be helpful beyond the case of trivial demos,
>>>but I can't prove that since I almost never write those kinds of
>>>programs).
>>>
>>>The problem with adding a PNG backend is that it would introduce a new
>>>dependency, (on libpng), and of course I'd like to minimize
>>>dependencies.
>>>
>>>One option is to introduce a new helper library libcairo-png or some
>>>such with its own <cairo-png.h>. This is possible since the PNG
>>>backend only requires functionality already in the public API. This is
>>>in contrast to the X/Render backend or a potential PDF backend, which
>>>require internal functionality.
>>>
>>>But I don't like the notion of confusing the user with respect to
>>>which backends are builtin and which are available only in helper
>>>libraries.
>>>
>>>So, I'm back to wanting to shove the PNG backend directly into
>>>cairo. While some might see the libpng dependency as gratuitous, some
>>>might already find the X library dependencies equally (or more)
>>>gratuitous. So maybe all we need is the ability to optionally disable
>>>backends at compile time?
>>>
>>>Any thoughts to help me out?
>>>
>>>-Carl
>>>
>>>PS. Here's a fairly minimal, but complete example possible with the
>>>proposed PNG backend. The differences compared to what's possible
>>>today is that there's no need to allocate an image buffer, worry about
>>>stride, or write code to convert the image and write it out as a PNG.
>>>
>>>#include <cairo.h>
>>>
>>>int main (void)
>>>{
>>>   cairo_t *cr;
>>>
>>>   cr = cairo_create ();
>>>
>>>   cairo_set_target_png (cr, "demo.png", CAIRO_FORMAT_ARGB32, 100, 100);
>>>
>>>   cairo_move_to (cr, 10., 10.);
>>>   cairo_line_to (cr, 90., 90.);
>>>   cairo_set_rgb_color (cr, 0., 0., 1.);
>>>   cairo_fill (cr);
>>>
>>>   cairo_destroy (cr);
>>>
>>>   return 0;
>
>
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