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.