[cairo] Compiling Cairo with MinGW under Win32

[Carl Worth]

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:48:13 -0400 (EDT), Jack Chen wrote:
> I also have another question. I know a vector graphics rendering can be
> easily saved as a bitmapped format, but can Cairo, or any vector
> graphics libraries, save/convert a bitmapped image to a vector
> graphics's format?

I'm not sure I know what you want to do.

Are you just wanting to embed a bitmapped image alongside some vector
graphics? In that case, cairo does have support to display images. See,
for example:

	http://cairographics.org/samples/image.html

Similarly, vector graphics file formats such as SVG, do have means of
embedding raster data inside of them, (or referencing an external image
file).

Or are you perhaps wanting to "vectorize" a bitmapped image? That is,
create a vector-based description of an input image? If so, cairo
doesn't have any code to help with this problem. But there are several
free software projects that do address this problem. For example:

Command-line tools:
	autotrace - http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/
	potrace - http://potrace.sourceforge.net/

GUI frontends:
	delineate - http://delineate.sourceforge.net/

And the potrace page suggests that an upcoming release of inkscape may
have built-in support for doing this kind of thing:

	inkscape - http://www.inkscape.org/

Have fun.

-Carl