[cairo] Re: Article for german iX magazine
Alp Toker
alp at atoker.com
Sat Jan 6 14:59:49 PST 2007
Michael Bruckmeier wrote:
> my name is Michael Bruckmeier and I am about to write an
> article about Cairo. It will be in one of the next few Issues of german
> iX magazine (www.ix.de <http://www.ix.de>), spanning four pages. It will
> also point out some connections to Microsoft’s WPF. I just wanted to let
> the world know. Perhaps someone has some interesting points to share
> with me, which i can present in that article.
Hi Michael,
You might be interested in NDesk Xps, http://www.ndesk.org/Xps
This is an implementation of XPS, the XML Paper Specification, a
fixed-layout document format. It's not yet complete but manages to
render many documents.
It works by targeting Cairo, a 2D graphics library with support for
multiple output devices. The imaging models are fairly similar so
lossless conversions to targets like PDF should be possible.
NDesk Xps is capable of taking an xps file and processing it entirely
in memory, including support for loading and de-obfuscating embedded
fonts and subsetting them (using Cairo) to the target surface. This
means that text can maintain its typographic qualities throughout
conversion without rasterisation.
The code is written in C# and has been tested on Mono. The only tool
available is currently an XPS-to-PDF converter, however conversions to
other file formats such as SVG and PostScript is trivially possible
and will be supported soon. The code can also trivially and
efficiently support graphical viewers, and the goal is to eventually
provide Gtk# and Windows.Forms XPS viewer utilities.
XPS is an interesting format because, apart from its physical package
layout, its format is a subset of Microsoft's WPF/E Windows
Presentation Foundation. Thus the NDesk Xps project can act as a
stepping stone towards a fuller implementation of the WPF
specification.
Note that this currently requires Mono.Cairo from Mono's SVN repository
as I have been fixing the binding as I go, based partly on feedback from
Carl Worth.
If you have any specific questions about how the models compare or how
to install the software, feel free to ask, but keep in mind that I am
only tackling the static subset of WPF that deals with document layout
right now, so basically this is analogous to PDF.
Regards.
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