[cairo] Recording Surfaces (was Re: virtual surfaces and composition)

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Wed, 09 Dec 2015 21:41:32 +0000, Henry (Yu) Song wrote:

> On 12/9/15, 1:34 PM, "cairo on behalf of Lawrence D'Oliveiro"
> <cairo-bounces at cairographics.org on behalf of
> ldo at geek-central.gen.nz> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 09 Dec 2015 21:29:02 +0000, Henry (Yu) Song wrote:
>>  
>>> On 12/9/15, 1:26 PM, "cairo on behalf of Lawrence D'Oliveiro"
>>> <cairo-bounces at cairographics.org on behalf of
>>> ldo at geek-central.gen.nz> wrote:
>>>  
>>>> However, when I scaled up the pattern, it looked blurred. Which
>>>> surprised me, because I thought it would be
>>>> resolution-independent.  
>>>
>>> That is the expected behavior.  It is same as your draw the circle
>>> to an image surface, and paint the image surface to another with
>>> scaling.  
>>
>>What is the point of using a recording surface over an image surface,
>>then?
>
> (1) A recording surface can be played back on other types of surfaces
> - xlib, xcb, quartz, gl, you name it
> 
> (2) enable parallel rendering - image you recording in one thread and
> playback on other thread, for example
> 
> (3) you can record once, and playback many times if you want

How is any of that better than using an image surface?