[cairo] Write ups on Microsoft Avalon

[Vladimir Vukicevic]

Carl Worth wrote:
> On Fri, 7 May 2004 06:44:11 -0700 (PDT), Jon Smirl wrote:
> 
>>If Cairo is missing basic compatibility at the drawing operation level it will
>>be very difficult for things like mono to fix it.
> 
> 
> And a project like mono is the right thing to flush this kind of issue out.
> 
> My understanding is that mono is using cairo to implement an interface
> that is compatible with GDI+.
> 
> I expect the mono crowd to let us know if anything is missing.

Mono's libgdiplus is implemented on top of cairo, and is intended to be 
compatible with GDI+ so that mono's implementation of System.Drawing can 
run under both windows (with native GDI+) and unix systems.  I don't 
think we've run into any major issues; one of the big missing pieces was 
the "path gradient" stuff that I mentioned a while ago, but it's not a 
showstopper -- I've only run into one app that uses it, and it's easy 
enough to stub out with a radial gradient or even a solid fill.

The big problem with comparing GDI+ and Cairo is that GDI+ takes very 
much a kitchen-sink approach, whereas Cairo seems to be more about the 
core building blocks.  Much of System.Windows.Media seems very similar 
to System.Drawing, so Cairo, along with a more higher level layer, 
should be able to provide the necessary drawing functionality.

	- Vlad