World: r3wp

There really is only once place you need to be concerned about the 
library size and that's  for cgi .. and that doesn't use graphics

So I believe the concern about library size is misplaced

We're not in the embedded space, or on phones ...

Well, I disagree.

Rebol's run time memory far exceeds any savings we might get from 
a small library

That's not the issue. The issue is to avoid bringing in the hellish 
chaos of win32 printing so close to the rebol core.

so you want to go another decade without the ability to print??

There will be plenty of ability to print, but surely there are smarter 
ways to go about that than by bringing in a huge monolithic library 
like Cairo.

And the fact is, that most systems will be running the library anyway 
as part of firefox or something else

small is beautiful except when you can't do much with it

That doesn't help anything for platforms that don't use it.

that's what the host kit is for

As said, size is not the issue, but managability. The issue is to 
keep uniformity as far outward as possible in the rebol core. If 
possible, keep win32 printing as a small mezz library, like DocKimbel 
has done for R2.

(size is a side effect of managability)

How big is Cairo lib? IIRC it was over 1MB? I agree with Robert - 
let's finish what we have. Let's see, what enhancements we can get 
in. AGG is still a cool library, being used by MANY projects. Just 
becuase Mozilla honchos could not do any better and choosed Cairo 
as mostly a political decision (because of author's involvement in 
the project) does not mean Cairo is any better ...


Apart from that, and as Robert says - in future, we can eventually 
replace it.

I agree with not switching right now, but I also think we need to 
consider the benefits and how we mgith get PS/PDF support. I've though 
DIsplay Postscript was a great idea since NeXT. And if there's a 
way, for those who want to include it, to add it as an extension, 
we don't impact the core.

an extension linkin agg and  opengl would be awsome and crazy at 
same time
that's sad the developpement stopped

but there is 2 things differents ... you have the dialect draw wich 
gives access to the insertion of  drawn shapes into a VID face and 
AGG is the engine can then beanything
....

can opengl be  used the same extends as AGG hum ... opengl have a 
heavy mechanics and that's not suited in my opinion for 2D fast over 
face rendering

the thing is draw and so agg can be used on any widget  componing 
VID and that's a hugde constraint

what really sux with opengl are those  half assed IHM interface i 
know glut, x and w32 extension that allows the opengl rendering engine 
to recive user

events and then display  on screen in the particular area set for 
it.


Those interfaces are not 1% as fun as VID... Vid is total flexibility. 
we never did that in vid be you can imagine heavy animation using 
draw dialect on any kind

of preset styled face. I think carl tryed to show that with the animated 
sliding widget when you open a window in his R3 GUI demo.

for me doing 2D using opengl always apeared to me as using a nuclear 
bomb to kill a single poor tiny cute ant ...(ok ant isn't cute...)

that doesn't means it doesn"t have it's grace.

things like transparency could be handled a way faster using opengl

ofcourse the software speudo antialiasing  u can find in AGG is just 
 a joke compared to  X16 antialiasing buffers that can be found on 
now in dayx accelarting video cards.

comparing AGG antialising and opengl antialiasing is like comparing 
the sun and the moon ...

the moon shines but it's only due to the refraction of the light 
comming from the sun that's prety much what the normalisation algorithms 
using in AGG does and they completly sux with tiny chars fonts... 
making them so blur or fuzzy as you like that you can't read them 
...

but in agg you don't have  a proper way to handle fonts who wants 
to have flat texels to represent is document or hundreds of  png 
files in memory ... and that where glut and other extensions try 
to give solutions but the réalisaton is in général ugly.

but in opengl  you don't have  a proper way to handle fonts who wants 
to have flat texels to represent is document or hundreds of  png 
files in memory ... and that where glut and other extensions try 
to give solutions but the réalisaton is in général ugly.

And Cairo?

one thing wich is really needed is the ability to have transparent 
windows no border no title no background ... a lot of things fun 
could be done once having that

graham in general when it starts with cairon or anothing context 
... that's a bad sign  i mean rebol doesnt formally mention that 
...

the draw context in a face is always there ... it's embeded in it 
no need to say HEY YOU KNOW WHAT  NOW WE WILL DO A SQUARE IN THIS 
WINDOWS AND PUT SOME CONTENT in it using some engine

that's a cool concept to séparated things and make a dedicated widget 
that handle this rendering style and wich is mixed with common other 
widgets

You're confusing me ...

that's what QT GTK+ WXWindows does

so things like super posing the regular widget properties of a VID 
face and some specific draw of  another specific rendering engine

but i can be wrong the cairo context is maybe just a transparent 
back grounded abstracted widget you can clip to any face

I'm less concerned about coolness then an appropriate license and 
functionality of an up to date graphics library

on a fonctionnality ground cairo have good point

it embed an SVG engine ( even if i'm sure a rebol / agg one blast 
it ) support of freefonts  support of png (but only this image format 
where rebol works with jpg etc...)

but you have an image surface ... wher you can clip any rvb content 
... even opengl buffer ?

i mean you can trop opengl rendering in a file why not traping it 
to a image buffer and then display it

the idea of rendering postscript or PDF is very appealing to me

i think cairo can be fun  but then the question is always the same 
will the dialect build to interface it with rebol will cover the 
whole thing or just cover the ground capabilities

i like the path thing in cairo ...

the difference is that we now have the host kit so it can be extended

that make me think are bezier curves like thing  you set a curve 
shape and you can draw anything to shape it

using the  cairo path layer you can imagine multi layer drawing  
something like photoshop's "calques" (sorry it's french lets say 
masks)

but why doing multi layer well to determine an order of was is  on 
top of what when rendering

having multi layers means you can then  multi thread the rendering 
1 layer per thread  this will enhance the complexity of what we can 
display on screen  (think about rendering a webpage or a pdf document 
for example)