Re: GdkPixbuf vs. Cairo, new image library needed?

["BJörn Lindqvist" <bjourne gmail com>]

On 10/8/07, Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com> wrote:
> BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
> > So how about replacing gdk-pixbuf with something cairo compatible that
> > is also modern? 16 bits per sample is common these days. Support for
> > digital camera RAW images would also be nice. Is a completely new
> > image library worth pursuing? Are there maybe better ways to solve the
> > problems Cairo and GdkPixbuf have?
> >
>
> I would say "completely new" is scary, because the actual loaders in
> gdk-pixbuf represent years of bugfixes and contributions, and are
> security-sensitive to boot. Something completely new that didn't use
> that code would be a major regression. It might be nicer to frame the
> issue as creating a parallel cairo-centric API using the same loader code.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant. Of course it would be nice to
extend it with support for 16 bit color channels and more image
formats, but the working code should work.

> Those two things (cairo surface from file/stream, and supporting cairo
> surfaces where widgets currently support pixbufs) would address most
> practical problems. Definitely would be good to get those simple fixes
> in ASAP, imo.

I have played around with Cairo some more and it seems to me that it
is not fully ready yet. :( Cairo blits and scales much slower than
gdk-pixbuf (software that is) and doesn't support as good-looking
bilinear filtering that gdk-pixbuf does.


-- 
mvh Björn