[Cairo] Color transforms

[Carl Worth]

On Jul 16, David Forster wrote:
 > I know that Cairo at some point needs to be cleaned up to remove
 > Xlib-isms and to allow new external rendering devices to be defined (I
 > assume?).

Yes, Cairo does need some new architecting with respect to how the
backends work.

One result from the current Xr/Xc experiments is that we actually
don't want to expose the backend interface as a separate library, (at
least not until we've had more experience with different
backends). The problem is that it's too hard to keep the split at the
right place, especially as different backends have such widely
different needs, (eg. the current Xr/Xc split aligns with the RENDER
interface, but this is quite different than what you might want for
PDF).

It sounds like one thing that might satisfy your needs would be a sort
of programmable "loopback" backend with the ability to call into Cairo
again with a different actual backend. That's an interesting
capability to keep in mind as the new architecture comes together.

Thanks,

-Carl

-- 
Carl Worth                                        
USC Information Sciences Institute                      cworth at isi.edu