1 Cairo - Multi-platform 2D graphics library
2 http://cairographics.org
6 Cairo is a 2D graphics library with support for multiple output
7 devices. Currently supported output targets include the X Window
8 System (via both Xlib and XCB), quartz, win32, and image buffers,
9 as well as PDF, PostScript, and SVG file output. Experimental backends
10 include OpenGL, BeOS, OS/2, and DirectFB.
12 Cairo is designed to produce consistent output on all output media
13 while taking advantage of display hardware acceleration when available
14 (for example, through the X Render Extension).
16 The cairo API provides operations similar to the drawing operators of
17 PostScript and PDF. Operations in cairo include stroking and filling
18 cubic Bézier splines, transforming and compositing translucent images,
19 and antialiased text rendering. All drawing operations can be
20 transformed by any affine transformation (scale, rotation, shear,
23 Cairo has been designed to let you draw anything you want in a modern
24 2D graphical user interface. At the same time, the cairo API has been
25 designed to be as fun and easy to learn as possible. If you're not
26 having fun while programming with cairo, then we have failed
27 somewhere---let us know and we'll try to fix it next time around.
29 Cairo is free software and is available to be redistributed and/or
30 modified under the terms of either the GNU Lesser General Public
31 License (LGPL) version 2.1 or the Mozilla Public License (MPL) version
34 Where to get more information about cairo
35 =========================================
36 The primary source of information about cairo is:
38 http://cairographics.org/
40 The latest versions of cairo can always be found at:
42 http://cairographics.org/download
44 Documentation on using cairo and frequently-asked questions:
46 http://cairographics.org/documentation
47 http://cairographics.org/FAQ
49 Mailing lists for contacting cairo users and developers:
51 http://cairographics.org/lists
53 Roadmap and unscheduled things to do, (please feel free to help out):
55 http://cairographics.org/roadmap
56 http://cairographics.org/todo
60 The set of libraries needed to compile cairo depends on which backends
61 are enabled when cairo is configured. So look at the list below to
62 determine which dependencies are needed for the backends of interest.
64 For the surface backends, we have both "supported" and "experimental"
65 backends. Further, the supported backends can be divided into the
66 "standard" backends which can be easily built on any platform, and the
67 "platform" backends which depend on some underlying platform-specific
68 system, (such as the X Window System or some other window system).
70 As an example, for a standard Linux build similar to what's shipped by
71 your distro, (with image, png, pdf, PostScript, svg, and xlib surface
72 backends, and the freetype font backend), the following sample commands
73 will install necessary dependencies:
77 apt-get build-dep cairo
81 yum install libpng-devel zlib-devel libXrender-devel fontconfig-devel
83 Technically you probably don't need pixman from the distribution since
84 if you're manually compiling Cairo you probably want an updated pixman
85 as well. However, if you follow the default settings and install pixman
86 to /usr/local, your Cairo build should properly use it in preference to
90 Supported, "standard" surface backends
91 ------------------------------------
92 image backend (required)
93 ------------------------
94 pixman >= 0.30.0 http://cairographics.org/releases
96 png support (can be left out if desired, but many
97 ----------- applications expect it to be present)
98 libpng http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
102 zlib http://www.gzip.org/zlib
106 zlib http://www.gzip.org/zlib
112 Supported, "platform" surface backends
113 -----------------------------------
116 X11 http://freedesktop.org/Software/xlibs
120 Xrender >= 0.6 http://freedesktop.org/Software/xlibs
124 MacOS X >= 10.5 with Xcode >= 3.0
128 Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer[*].
132 XCB http://xcb.freedesktop.org
134 Font backends (required to have at least one)
135 ---------------------------------------------
136 freetype font backend
137 ---------------------
138 freetype >= 2.1.9 http://freetype.org
139 fontconfig http://fontconfig.org
143 MacOS X >= 10.4 with Xcode >= 2.4
147 Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer[*].
149 [*] The Win32 backend should work on Windows 2000 and newer
150 (excluding Windows Me.) Most testing has been done on
151 Windows XP. While some portions of the code have been
152 adapted to work on older versions of Windows, considerable
153 work still needs to be done to get cairo running in those
156 Cairo can be compiled on Windows with either the gcc
157 toolchain (see http://www.mingw.org) or with Microsoft
158 Visual C++. If the gcc toolchain is used, the standard
159 build instructions using configure apply, (see INSTALL).
160 If Visual C++ is desired, GNU make is required and
161 Makefile.win32 can be used via 'make -f Makefile.win32'.
162 The compiler, include paths, and library paths must be set
163 up correctly in the environment.
165 MSVC versions earlier than 7.1 are known to miscompile
166 parts of cairo and pixman, and so should be avoided. MSVC
167 7.1 or later, including the free Microsoft Visual Studio
168 Express editions, produce correct code.
170 Experimental surface backends
171 -----------------------------
174 No dependencies in itself other than an installed BeOS system, but cairo
175 requires a font backend. See the freetype dependency list.
179 Cairo should run on any recent version of OS/2 or eComStation, but it
180 requires a font backend. See the freetype dependency list. Ready to use
181 packages and developer dependencies are available at Netlabs:
182 ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/cairo
186 Requires the skia library as of June 2014. Since skia is not
187 API stable, building against newer (or older) versions of skia
193 See the INSTALL document for build instructions.
198 Cairo was originally developed by Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> and
199 Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com>. Many thanks are due to Lyle Ramshaw
200 without whose patient help our ignorance would be much more apparent.
202 Since the original development, many more people have contributed to
203 cairo. See the AUTHORS files for as complete a list as we've been able