[cairo] Paths as paths

[Øyvind Kolås]

On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 11:33:19 -0500, Carl Worth <cworth at redhat.com> wrote:
> It *might* make sense to create a separate, high-level, output backend
> for cairo, that would be suitable for creating resolution-independent
> PDF, or editable SVG. But then again, it might not. Cairo wouldn't be
> providing much in this case, as it would just be passing data directly
> from the user to the various backends. And there would be a ton of
> things that PDF/SVG file creators would like to do that would be
> unavailable. So, we'd end up with a very limited PDF/SVG abstraction
> layer, that happens to have the same API as the display/print drawing
> layer. Would that be useful?

I find it very useful, one of the things I've got some code lying
about for is a presentation program. Being able to generate an
"optimized for screen PDF". Would be nice, that is to be shown full
screen. This is similar to how many other applications handle PDF,
having both PDF for screen and PDF for print output.

I wouldn't make it another PDF backend if that could be avoided, but
rather have the backend's behavior tunable thorugh a profile
consisting of key/value pairs might be better (or have I somehow
missed a part of the shakeup about setting backend specific surface
properties?).

/Øyvind K./pippin

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