| Cairo - Multi-platform 2D graphics library |
| http://cairographics.org |
| |
| What is cairo |
| ============= |
| Cairo is a 2D graphics library with support for multiple output |
| devices. Currently supported output targets include the X Window |
| System (via both Xlib and XCB), quartz, win32, and image buffers, |
| as well as PDF, PostScript, and SVG file output. Experimental backends |
| include OpenGL, BeOS, OS/2, and DirectFB. |
| |
| Cairo is designed to produce consistent output on all output media |
| while taking advantage of display hardware acceleration when available |
| (for example, through the X Render Extension). |
| |
| The cairo API provides operations similar to the drawing operators of |
| PostScript and PDF. Operations in cairo include stroking and filling |
| cubic Bézier splines, transforming and compositing translucent images, |
| and antialiased text rendering. All drawing operations can be |
| transformed by any affine transformation (scale, rotation, shear, |
| etc.). |
| |
| Cairo has been designed to let you draw anything you want in a modern |
| 2D graphical user interface. At the same time, the cairo API has been |
| designed to be as fun and easy to learn as possible. If you're not |
| having fun while programming with cairo, then we have failed |
| somewhere---let us know and we'll try to fix it next time around. |
| |
| Cairo is free software and is available to be redistributed and/or |
| modified under the terms of either the GNU Lesser General Public |
| License (LGPL) version 2.1 or the Mozilla Public License (MPL) version |
| 1.1. |
| |
| Where to get more information about cairo |
| ========================================= |
| The primary source of information about cairo is: |
| |
| http://cairographics.org/ |
| |
| The latest versions of cairo can always be found at: |
| |
| http://cairographics.org/download |
| |
| Documentation on using cairo and frequently-asked questions: |
| |
| http://cairographics.org/documentation |
| http://cairographics.org/FAQ |
| |
| Mailing lists for contacting cairo users and developers: |
| |
| http://cairographics.org/lists |
| |
| Roadmap and unscheduled things to do, (please feel free to help out): |
| |
| http://cairographics.org/roadmap |
| http://cairographics.org/todo |
| |
| Dependencies |
| ============ |
| The set of libraries needed to compile cairo depends on which backends |
| are enabled when cairo is configured. So look at the list below to |
| determine which dependencies are needed for the backends of interest. |
| |
| For the surface backends, we have both "supported" and "experimental" |
| backends. Further, the supported backends can be divided into the |
| "standard" backends which can be easily built on any platform, and the |
| "platform" backends which depend on some underlying platform-specific |
| system, (such as the X Window System or some other window system). |
| |
| As an example, for a standard Linux build similar to what's shipped by |
| your distro, (with image, png, pdf, PostScript, svg, and xlib surface |
| backends, and the freetype font backend), the following sample commands |
| will install necessary dependencies: |
| |
| Debian (and similar): |
| |
| apt-get build-dep cairo |
| |
| Fedora (and similar): |
| |
| yum install libpng-devel zlib-devel libXrender-devel fontconfig-devel |
| |
| Technically you probably don't need pixman from the distribution since |
| if you're manually compiling Cairo you probably want an updated pixman |
| as well. However, if you follow the default settings and install pixman |
| to /usr/local, your Cairo build should properly use it in preference to |
| the system pixman. |
| |
| |
| Supported, "standard" surface backends |
| ------------------------------------ |
| image backend (required) |
| ------------------------ |
| pixman >= 0.30.0 http://cairographics.org/releases |
| |
| png support (can be left out if desired, but many |
| ----------- applications expect it to be present) |
| libpng http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html |
| |
| pdf backend |
| ----------- |
| zlib http://www.gzip.org/zlib |
| |
| postscript backend |
| ------------------ |
| zlib http://www.gzip.org/zlib |
| |
| svg backend |
| ----------- |
| [none] |
| |
| Supported, "platform" surface backends |
| ----------------------------------- |
| xlib backend |
| ------------ |
| X11 http://freedesktop.org/Software/xlibs |
| |
| xlib-xrender backend |
| -------------------- |
| Xrender >= 0.6 http://freedesktop.org/Software/xlibs |
| |
| quartz backend |
| -------------- |
| MacOS X >= 10.5 with Xcode >= 3.0 |
| |
| win32 backend |
| ------------- |
| Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer[*]. |
| |
| xcb backend |
| ----------- |
| XCB http://xcb.freedesktop.org |
| |
| Font backends (required to have at least one) |
| --------------------------------------------- |
| freetype font backend |
| --------------------- |
| freetype >= 2.1.9 http://freetype.org |
| fontconfig http://fontconfig.org |
| |
| quartz-font backend |
| ------------------- |
| MacOS X >= 10.4 with Xcode >= 2.4 |
| |
| win32 font backend |
| ------------------ |
| Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer[*]. |
| |
| [*] The Win32 backend should work on Windows 2000 and newer |
| (excluding Windows Me.) Most testing has been done on |
| Windows XP. While some portions of the code have been |
| adapted to work on older versions of Windows, considerable |
| work still needs to be done to get cairo running in those |
| environments. |
| |
| Cairo can be compiled on Windows with either the gcc |
| toolchain (see http://www.mingw.org) or with Microsoft |
| Visual C++. If the gcc toolchain is used, the standard |
| build instructions using configure apply, (see INSTALL). |
| If Visual C++ is desired, GNU make is required and |
| Makefile.win32 can be used via 'make -f Makefile.win32'. |
| The compiler, include paths, and library paths must be set |
| up correctly in the environment. |
| |
| MSVC versions earlier than 7.1 are known to miscompile |
| parts of cairo and pixman, and so should be avoided. MSVC |
| 7.1 or later, including the free Microsoft Visual Studio |
| Express editions, produce correct code. |
| |
| Experimental surface backends |
| ----------------------------- |
| beos backend |
| ------------ |
| No dependencies in itself other than an installed BeOS system, but cairo |
| requires a font backend. See the freetype dependency list. |
| |
| os2 backend |
| ----------- |
| Cairo should run on any recent version of OS/2 or eComStation, but it |
| requires a font backend. See the freetype dependency list. Ready to use |
| packages and developer dependencies are available at Netlabs: |
| ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/cairo |
| |
| skia backend |
| ------------ |
| Requires the skia library as of June 2014. Since skia is not |
| API stable, building against newer (or older) versions of skia |
| will probably fail. |
| |
| |
| Compiling |
| ========= |
| See the INSTALL document for build instructions. |
| |
| |
| History |
| ======= |
| Cairo was originally developed by Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> and |
| Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com>. Many thanks are due to Lyle Ramshaw |
| without whose patient help our ignorance would be much more apparent. |
| |
| Since the original development, many more people have contributed to |
| cairo. See the AUTHORS files for as complete a list as we've been able |
| to compile so far. |
