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RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] Arbitrary EPS/PS/PDF import & Cairo



--On 16 June 2006 23:17 +0100 Charles Moir <CharlesM@xxxxxxxx> wrote:


Explain this one. What's the relationship between Cairo and Ghostscript?


Or are you saying that Ghostscript can / does use Cairo as a rendering
side, and that somehow we use that to drive an importer.... Hhmm, no I
don't see that. Putting an alternative backend on Ghostscript that
outputs to Gerry's filter system I could certainly see as a way of
getting arbitrary PS imported. But can't see how Cairo would come into
that.


Ghostscript has a pluggable backend system so it can write vectors to
printer drivers. While several print as bitmaps, several don't. There
is (or will be) a Cairo backend. I'd misremembered Carl's rainy day ambition
as to write a Cairo->Xara importer (he actually said a Xara->Cairo exporter)
but the fact remains it's possible to take GS intermediate vector output
and import it. It's many many years since I looked at GS output drivers
and they have probably changed immeasurably but there are several ways
to do this, including writing a native .xar backend for GS, or hanging
of the cairo backend (though it would probably be useful it Cairo had
metafiles for that). For all I know there may be an SVG backend.

Alex