evas backend [was Re: cairo backend]

[Armando Di Cianno]

On 2004-07-02 10:13:06 -0400 Dan Mardale <dan.mardale@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to know what choices for a cairo back-end are out there and
> how can I get involved. I'd really love to see it ready asap.

I'm curious if anyone else out there has mulled over the idea of using 
evas (from englightment's e17 core libraries) as a backend.  Even 
though, just now, it's getting to almost 1.0, it's pretty ... awesome. 
 I suggest looking into it.

It'd be nice for hardware acceleration to "just work", and even the 
software optimization is pretty great (well, "awesome" on x86, and 
"good" on other platforms).  Also, it's shed it's required dependance 
on X, and can run on DirectFB.  Right now the only required library is 
freetype2.  Plans to run on handheld devices, Windows, SDL, etc.  It 
would be like a meta-backend, and GNUstep wouldn't have to worry about 
having backends for different platforms when evas reached the point of 
running on all major operating systems.  Considering rasterman's 
history with functionally good code that makes pretty pictures 
efficiently, I think this would be great.

Not that cairo doesn't / isn't going to rock, but evas works, is 
mostly awesome, and is almost at 1.0 release (which says a lot since 
e17 has been in seeming perpetual development).

I looked into trying this myself.  I (used to) do a fair share of low 
level audio programming, but for some reason I can't get my brain 
around graphical bits like I could with audio bits.

Any comments about this idea may inspire me to try, however. :-)

__Armando Di Cianno