Documentation?

[Alan Cox]

> > How standard is Cairo?  The proof-of-concept app from 15 years ago
> > still works fine because it's only got two dependancies: Xlib and
> > libc.  It works everywhere for the same reason.  If I added Cairo as a
> > dependancy, would apps still work on 100% of Linux systems, and would
> > they still work unmodified 15 years from now?
> 
> I don't think anyone here can promise you any given piece of software
> will last 15 years, but given GTK and Firefox use Cairo (gecko not
> widget-side only), OpenOffice.org is being converted to use it, and
> they're all massive codebases with huge install bases, I'd say the

and evince and inkscape and various other key apps

> chances of cairo not being deployed on a current system, or going away
> in the next 5 years, are pretty slight.

It also seems like the original question has a small confusion. Cairo and
render go together, but cairo is perfectly happy with a non render
capable server (or win32 or all sorts of targets), just a bit slower.
Similarly pango sits on top of cairo.

Render coverage is pretty good - even X-Win32 and the like support it.

However even without render a cairo app should display correctly on the
15 year old X server, although a cairo using app might take a while to
run on a 15 year 25MHz 386 PC :)

Alan