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, (with image, png, pdf,
71 PostScript, svg, and xlib surface backends, and the freetype font
72 backend), the following sample commands will install necessary
77 apt-get install libpng12-dev libz-dev libxrender-dev libfontconfig1-dev
81 yum install libpng-devel zlib-devel libXrender-devel fontconfig-devel
83 (Those commands intentionally don't install pixman from a distribution
84 package since if you're manually compiling cairo, then you likely want
85 to grab pixman from the same place at the same time and compile it as
88 Supported, "standard" surface backends
89 ------------------------------------
90 image backend (required)
91 ------------------------
92 pixman >= 0.20.2 http://cairographics.org/releases
94 png support (can be left out if desired, but many
95 ----------- applications expect it to be present)
96 libpng http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
100 zlib http://www.gzip.org/zlib
104 zlib http://www.gzip.org/zlib
110 Supported, "platform" surface backends
111 -----------------------------------
114 X11 http://freedesktop.org/Software/xlibs
118 Xrender >= 0.6 http://freedesktop.org/Software/xlibs
122 MacOS X >= 10.4 with Xcode >= 2.4
126 Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer[*].
130 XCB http://xcb.freedesktop.org
132 Font backends (required to have at least one)
133 ---------------------------------------------
134 freetype font backend
135 ---------------------
136 freetype >= 2.1.9 http://freetype.org
137 fontconfig http://fontconfig.org
141 MacOS X >= 10.4 with Xcode >= 2.4
145 Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer[*].
147 [*] The Win32 backend should work on Windows 2000 and newer
148 (excluding Windows Me.) Most testing has been done on
149 Windows XP. While some portions of the code have been
150 adapted to work on older versions of Windows, considerable
151 work still needs to be done to get cairo running in those
154 Cairo can be compiled on Windows with either the gcc
155 toolchain (see http://www.mingw.org) or with Microsoft
156 Visual C++. If the gcc toolchain is used, the standard
157 build instructions using configure apply, (see INSTALL).
158 If Visual C++ is desired, GNU make is required and
159 Makefile.win32 can be used via 'make -f Makefile.win32'.
160 The compiler, include paths, and library paths must be set
161 up correctly in the environment.
163 MSVC versions earlier than 7.1 are known to miscompile
164 parts of cairo and pixman, and so should be avoided. MSVC
165 7.1 or later, including the free Microsoft Visual Studio
166 Express editions, produce correct code.
168 Experimental surface backends
169 -----------------------------
172 No dependencies in itself other than an installed BeOS system, but cairo
173 requires a font backend. See the freetype dependency list.
177 Cairo should run on any recent version of OS/2 or eComStation, but it
178 requires a font backend. See the freetype dependency list. Ready to use
179 packages and developer dependencies are available at Netlabs:
180 ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/cairo
184 See the INSTALL document for build instructions.
188 Cairo was originally developed by Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> and
189 Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com>. Many thanks are due to Lyle Ramshaw
190 without whose patient help our ignorance would be much more apparent.
192 Since the original development, many more people have contributed to
193 cairo. See the AUTHORS files for as complete a list as we've been able