[cairo] Re: Chaco DisplayPDF with Antigrain Internals

Rogelio M.Serrano Jr. rogelio at smsglobal.net
Fri Aug 20 14:52:47 PDT 2004


On 2004-08-21 05:16:27 +0800 M. Evans <datafeedNOSPAM at gmx.net> wrote:

> 
> Ross McFarland wrote,
> 
>> they're normally not nice for libraries as they make language 
>> bindings
>> very difficult.
> 
> And you expect people to infer this statement from three bang 
> marks...wow.
> 
> This rationale for C is common, and false.  Of course, no one expects 
> or 
> wants Cairo to change from C.  (Although a safe-C treatment like CIL 
> makes 
> sense.)
> 

Is it better to write it in pascal then? Or C++? I myself would prefer 
objc. I dont object to cairo being in C. What would everyone else do 
if cairo was rewritten in objc? You would fork your own cairo in c++ 
im sure and pascal programmers will have their own pascal fork too. I 
think cairo in c is acceptable to the majority.

> A price is paid for the supposed benefits - slower development, bugs, 
> low-level API mentality, etc.  The ease-of-binding claim is dubious. 
> For 
> example, an API which exposes C pointers all but guarantees that it 
> will only 
> be linked to C/C++.  Each language has to deal with the pointers in 
> its own 
> unique way, through C glue code.  I don't call that easy!  Now, a TCP 
> socket 
> which accepts string commands, that is easy from most any language - 
> not that 
> I recommend it, just for comparison.
> 
> 
> 
> Overall what Cairo needs is a feature matrix chart showing what 
> exists, what 
> exists partially, what doesn't exist, what will never exist, what 
> might 
> exist, and in what time frames.  I sometimes feel like I'm talking to 
> Microsoft, for all the future-ware that is being promised.
> 
> Cairo is a great project, but not the only one, so it would be nice 
> to get an 
> overview "at a glance" that disambiguates future-ware from 
> present-ware from 
> nearly-there-ware from never-ware.
> 
> Another thing.  What makes Kiva / Chaco appealing (to me) is not only 
> the BSD 
> license, but the fact that it's being used in real applications, 
> today.  It 
> would be nice to see some of those apps on the web, too, when they 
> come (as 
> opposed to unit-tests and mock-ups).
> 
> 

Yes of course. You are free to use what you like, Specially if you can 
extend the software and keep the extensions from your competitors.

> _______________________________________________
> cairo mailing list
> cairo at cairographics.org
> http://cairographics.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cairo
> 




More information about the cairo mailing list