[cairo] introducing a "context backend"

[Bill Spitzak]

I always thought the back-end api should look *exactly* like Cairo, 
where the cairo_t is a structure of function pointers, one per Cairo 
call, but perhaps with a few extra functions. Calls like this:

	cairo_foo(cairo_t* ct, ...)

turn into this:

	ct->foo(ct, ...)

If in fact the back-end does not implement foo(), this points at a 
default implementation. If in fact foo() can be done by some lower-level 
operation called bar() after some processing, this default 
implementation looks like this:

	default_cairo_foo(cairo_t* ct, ...) {
	  xyzzy = frob(...);
	  ct->bar(xyzzy);
	}

It does seem this should be done for *every* Cairo api, no matter how 
certain you are that "no back end will ever do that". It seems Cairo 
implementations are constantly running into these problems.

Robert O'Callahan wrote:
> For cairo backends that wrap high-level drawing APIs like Quartz and 
> D2D, exposing the platform API as a surface backend isn't a very good 
> fit. An ID2D1RenderTarget and a CGContext are much more like a cairo 
> context than a cairo surface: for example, they have a CTM. For 
> efficiency, we would like to avoid buffering path data in a 
> cairo_path_fixed_t and converting to native path data in a separate pass 
> --- avoiding conversion from double to cairo_fixed_t and back to double; 
> this suggests we need some kind of native path object stored in the 
> cairo_t. (For optimal performance with Quartz, we would want to be 
> emitting the path directly into a CGContext.) Our cairo_retained_path_t 
> API lets us avoid this overhead in some cases, but in others (e.g. 
> existing scripts that use <canvas> to render paths over and over again) 
> reducing the cairo overhead of immediate path filling and stroking is 
> essential.
> 
> How would people feel about introducing some kind of "context backend" 
> that lets pretty much all of the functionality of a cairo_t be passed 
> straight through to a platform context backend?
> 
> Rob
> -- 
> "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our 
> iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by 
> his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of 
> us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity 
> of us all." [Isaiah 53:5-6]
> 
> 
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