Using libart_lgpl directly

[Lyndon Drake <lyndon stat auckland ac nz>]

Hi,

I'm working on a graphics device for R, so that things like plots can
be displayed to the user.  I have a working device that displays plots
on a GdkDrawingArea, and I also wrote an experimental device that uses
the canvas.  Using the canvas produces very nice looking plots, but it
also uses up lots of memory (eg 10,000 points uses up about 40MB of
memory).  I realise that the canvas wasn't designed with this sort of
thing in mind, but I would like to be able to have nice anti-aliased
plots.

What I am considering doing is creating a widget, similar to
GdkDrawingArea in some respects, for displaying static, 
non-interactive graphics.  I envisage doing this by giving libart_lgpl
a buffer or pixmap, and a command (eg. line_to).  libart could then
render the line on the pixmap.  No information about the line would
need to be kept, and the memory used to display the image would be the
size of the pixmap.

Is it possible to use libart in this way?

I am also unsure about whether to make the api similar to PS or gdk/
X11.

I would appreciate some help with this, as the documentation for
libart is a little limited, and I am having difficulty getting a good
overview of libart's usage from the source.

Thanks,
Lyndon