A 2D graphics library that is open source and offers support for several output devices.
Cairo is a powerful software that currently supports multiple output targets such as X Window System, Quartz, Win32, image buffers, PostScript, PDF, and SVG file output. There are also experimental backends including OpenGL (through glitz), XCB, BeOS, OS/2, and DirectFB.
It has been designed to produce consistent output regardless of the output media, while taking advantage of display hardware acceleration when available (e.g. through the X Render Extension). The cairo API provides operations similar to the drawing operators of PostScript and PDF.
Included in the operations in Cairo are transforming, as well as compositing translucent images, stroking, filling cubic Bézier splines, and antialiased text rendering. All drawing operations are transformable by any affine transformation (including scale, rotation, shear, and more).
Cairo is implemented as a library written in the C programming language with bindings available for several different programming languages. It's important to note that Cairo is licensed and provided under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 or the Mozilla Public License (MPL) version 1.1 at your option.
Overall, Cairo is an excellent choice for anyone looking for flexible and reliable software that provides impressive output targets and powerful operations for drawing and design.
It has been designed to produce consistent output regardless of the output media, while taking advantage of display hardware acceleration when available (e.g. through the X Render Extension). The cairo API provides operations similar to the drawing operators of PostScript and PDF.
Included in the operations in Cairo are transforming, as well as compositing translucent images, stroking, filling cubic Bézier splines, and antialiased text rendering. All drawing operations are transformable by any affine transformation (including scale, rotation, shear, and more).
Cairo is implemented as a library written in the C programming language with bindings available for several different programming languages. It's important to note that Cairo is licensed and provided under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 or the Mozilla Public License (MPL) version 1.1 at your option.
Overall, Cairo is an excellent choice for anyone looking for flexible and reliable software that provides impressive output targets and powerful operations for drawing and design.
What's New
Version 1.8.6: N/A