[cairo] Is Cairo fo me?

[Philip Schneider]

Hello Jose,

I am a fairly new user of Cairo, so take my feedback with that in mind: I have not used an extremely wide range of its functionality.

What I have used, however, has worked quite well, and I am quite happy with the API and the overall functionality provided by Cairo. You are quite right in noting that drawing non-trivial objects in OpenGL is a difficult problem, especially for such examples as you mentioned. In that regard, Cairo provides a solution that is more than adequate. As a tiny example, the first thing I did with Cairo was to create a "thought balloon" (google if necessary). Doing this in raw OpenGL is highly problematic, but I was able to do it in Cairo with literally a handful of lines of code, in a few hours after first downloading/compiling Cairo.

Regarding compiling for different platforms: this has not been much of an issue for me - I have compiled and used Cairo on Mac, Windows, and even using FlasCC. In the first two cases, I've simply created OpenGL textures from the Cairo surface that is rendered, and a similar operation in FlasCC for that platform, using the Stage3D functionality.

You should definitely look at the various examples/demos on the web, to see if Cairo seems to be what you're looking for. In particular, look at the "back ends" Cairo provides. It is quite easy to set up small test programs, if you wish to explore its API and performance. From what you have written, I would guess that Cairo is at least worth your time for a thorough evaluation, and also guess you might find it a good solution for your situation.

Good luck!

-- Philip

On Apr 12, 2013, at 7:22 AM, José Antonio Carmena <jcurru at yahoo.es> wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> I'm new to Cairo. Glad to be here. I'm not an english speaker so excuse my mistakes, please.
> 
> Let's go.
> 
> We are developing a powerful application with 2D graphics in OpenGL, but we have reached a point where lines and points are not enough. We need dashed thick lines, double or triple thick lines, drawing SVGs in OpenGL, filled complex polygons, etc. We tried to develop some of these functions without success.
> 
> We found Cairo and wonder if it would be a good choice. It should solve the problems I mentioned above, plus working under Linux, Mac and Windows, without any code modification.
> 
> Does Cairo meet these requirements?
> 
> By the way, now we are developing in Embarcadero (formerly Borland). Have you tried to use Cairo in that IDE?
> 
> Many thanks in advance for your answers!
>  
> Jose
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