[poppler] Cairo Backend for Qt Wrapper

[Paul Gideon Dann]

On Thursday 11 June 2009 20:07:11 Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> > These patches are not complete and need some adjustments; although, I
> > have good version of it locally for some time already, so in case Albert
> > wants, I can merge those.
>
> As i already said i don't see a real need for it and sadly politics will
> kick in an get us in a discussion i don't want to be in, so let's just put
> them on hold for the time being.

Well, the need is simply that many people (myself included) find it difficult 
to read e-books in Okular because of the lack of subpixel font rendering.

Of course there *is* a political aspect to linking a Qt interface to a Cairo 
backend, but then there's a legal aspect to including the bytecode interpreter 
in FreeType, and that doesn't prevent them from making it an option.  I'm not 
saying the Cairo backend for the Qt wrapper should necessarily be available by 
default, just that it should be an option.  (You'll notice that it can already 
be easily switched on and off.)

If it were merged, I would expect most distros to ship with it disabled (just 
like the FreeType example), but then at least people like me that compile 
"lcd" versions of Xft and Cairo can have subpixel rendering if we want...

Paul