ex11, plotting and Cairo ...

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Armstrong (AL/EAB)" <joe.armstrong@REDACTED>
>But the primitives are the same! - suppose I have a primitive
>
>draw(Win, character, X, Y, font, glyfNumber)
>
>Which draws a particular Glyf at a X, Y then I get kerning by a "better" 
>computation
>of where X and Y are - a stupid algorithm just takes the bounding box width 
>to compute
>where the next character should go.
>
>So given a the same set of primitives we can have quick and dirty or 
>beautiful
>formatting, still with a decent concurrency model and decent layering

Just a thought: maybe sometimes one wants to output unkerned text (for 
speed, maybe, or because the font is fixed-size), or wants a better kerning 
algorithm. Likewise sometimes one wants antialiased, semi-transparent 
painting, sometimes good old aliased opaque is just fine (or even 
desireable). So we need an API for specifying that too.

I tried for a while ago to extract a simple API from the PDF model, or from 
the Java2D APIs, but if such issues should be taken care of, then there's 
not much simplification to be done...

regards,
Vlad