Cairo (graphics)
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Cairo is a free software graphics library with multiple backends that provides a vector-based device-independent API for software developers. Currently, it has backends that support output to the X Window System, Win32 GDI, the BeOS API, OpenGL contexts (via glitz), local image buffers, PNG files, PDF, PostScript and SVG files. Cairo is designed to use hardware-acceleration when available.
Although written in C, there are bindings for using the Cairo graphics library from many other programming languages, including C++, Common Lisp, Haskell, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, and [several others].
Cairo was started by Keith Packard and Carl Worth for use in the X Window System. It was originally called Xr or Xr/Xc. The name was changed to emphasize the idea that it was a cross-platform library and not tied to the X server. The name Cairo was derived from the original name Xr. The first syllable was based on the visual similarity between the letter X and the Greek letter Chi, and the second syllable was based on the similarity in pronunciation between the letter r and the Greek letter Rho (ρ).
Cairo is intended to compete with similar technologies like WPF from Microsoft and Quartz from Apple Computer.
Notable usage
- Gecko 1.8, the layout engine for Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and SeaMonkey 1.0 web browsers, uses Cairo to render SVG and content.
- Gecko 1.9, the future release of Gecko that will serve as the basis of Firefox 3.0, will use Cairo as the graphics backend for rendering both web page content and the user interface (or "chrome"). Gecko 1.9 is currently in development, with the Cairo-based version enabled in Firefox trunk builds starting February 22 2006 on Windows and soon on other platforms.
See also
- redirect
External links
- [Official Website]
- Linux.Ars: [Cairo here, there and everywhere]
- [Writing a Widget Using Cairo and GTK+2.8]
- [Mailing list thread about the Cairo name change]
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