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



On Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:10:39 +0100, Alex Bligh wrote:
> 
> 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.

OK. I see where you're going now.

Yes, ghostscript's pluggable backend system is definitely the right
way to get PostScript import for Xara.

And there is even the possibility of having cairo involved here. I
don't believe that a cairo-based ghostscript backend yet, but I would
certainly love to see one get written. And it's quite likely this
will happen at some point, I think.

Once that is in place it would be possible to use cairo's
multi-backend system to write something that generates Xara files.
Whether that's an independently useful thing to do might depend on
what your goals are for the Xara file format. Is this something where
you'd like to see a standard "Export as .xar" option in every
application? If so, then making a new cairo backend to write Xara
files would make a lot of sense. Or are you fine with using other
formats for standard interchange, and just leaving .xar as a private
format for Xara? In that case, I don't think one would get a lot of
use out of a new cairo backend.

So, today, it looks like the options for getting a GS->Xara path would
be:

1) Write a cairo backend for GS and a Xara backend for cairo.

2) Write a Xara backend for GS

Looking only at those two options, it certainly looks like the second
is less work than the first, (even if I would personally like to see
the GS->cairo thing get written).

-Carl

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