[Cairo] Window manager

[Carl Worth]

On Aug 5, Lars Segerlund wrote:
 >   An easy way of doing this would be to replace the X11 libs on the 
 > machinr, but I would wouch for hijacking the server connection, (
 > socket ).

There's no need to replace the Xlib library. There's not much
interesting information that goes through there that Cairo could do
fun things with.

Xlib does have a limited set of geometric primitives, (XDrawLines,
XDrawArc, XDrawText, etc.), but these are rarely used by modern
applications. Instead most current applications pass little more than
image though the old Xlib drawing interfaces.

So, Cairo won't be able to help much unless the applications start
drawing with a different model. And if the application, (or toolkit),
code must be modified it might as well start using Cairo directly
rather than relying on a hacked version of Xlib.

 > Bill Spitzak wrote:
 > > Sounds more like you want to replace the server, not the window manager. I 
 > > think replacing the server with something that understands Cairo directly is 
 > > the ultimate goal of this.

As for "replacing the server" the same argument applies. Cairo won't
be able to significantly improve the appearance of applications
written to rely on the old model.

There is the need to put into the server whatever operations might be
accelerated by the graphics hardware. That's why the Render extension
exists and why Cairo uses it whenever possible.

-Carl