Cairo (graphics)
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, OpenGL contexts (via glitz), local image buffers and PNG files. Future backends are planned that will support output to PDF and SVG files. Cairo is designed to use hardware-acceleration when available.
Cairo was started by Keith Packard and Carl Worth for use in the X Window System. It was originally called Xr or Xr/Xc.
Cairo is intended to compete with similar technologies such as Avalon from Microsoft and Quartz from Apple Computer.
High-profile usage
There are also plans to use Cairo as the graphics backend for Gecko-based web browsers starting with version 1.9, including for both the web page content as well as the XUL user interface.
Furthermore, future versions of the GTK+ toolkit are said to use Cairo.
See also
External link
Categories: Software stubs | Computer graphics | X Window System