[Cairo] Text API proposal

[Carl Worth]

On Jul 29, Thorsten Behrens wrote:
 > Why not abstracting away the layout framework within a generic text API?
 > That would also cater for backends (like e.g. PDF) that need more than raw
 > glyph codes.

The problem is that I don't trust myself well enough to successfully
abstract away high-level text layout in a sane way that will make all
consumers happy, (eg. it won't prevent essential capabilities from
being accessed).

That's a really hard problem, that would require a font expert,
(eg. not me), to pull it off.

And besides, even if such a thing existed, I would think it belongs at
a higher level and should build on top of what Cairo provides.

The only remaining problem I see with the lower level API that Cairo
exposes, is that you might have a native font service that you want to
use that provides a higher-level API, but is so tightly coupled with
another backend that it can't be hooked up to Cairo. If that's the
case, then I'm afraid I don't know what to do to solve the problem,
(other than fix the font service so that it can be retargeted).

-Carl

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