[cairo] Subtractive API, part 0

[ecir hana]

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 10:27 AM, Christoph Lindemann
<Christoph.Lindemann at printassociates.com> wrote:

> 1) Could not the color profile conversion stuff (CMS) simply be provided
> by the surface implementation?
> Then the surface knows best how to handle the color profiles.
> -The GDI surface for instance, could use the Windows CMS.
> -The PDF surface, could just embed the profiles into the PDF stream,
> then the PDF consumer would do the actual CMS. If it is a printer, the
> RIP would be responsible, or the print operator could tweak/change the
> profiles in his workflow.
> -Other surfaces could do the same.

A few quick ones:

- Would I get the same results across different platform? (IIRC, why
then Firefox developed their own CMS?)

- What about pixel surfaces? Who would do the managment there? Would
you need to convert an image surface to native surface, do the
conversion and then back? You mention TinyCMS bellow, is this the case
for it? Then, why to for all the surfaces - you would have to deal
with platform specifics...?

- What about platform, which does not have CMS? Something like
TinyCMS? The point is, if Cairo should reply on OS for color
management and use some library if CMS is not available, why to use
that library for everything and everytime?