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authorCarl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>2008-04-10 17:33:51 -0700
committerCarl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>2008-04-10 17:33:51 -0700
commit709805c26f567b7fa90d04e701ccbf1cccc34da7 (patch)
treebe108ef34ae48db5703397f169f28e2304e3be3e /NEWS
parentaadbaf7d990d0d5cd7c25cc856dbcfcc357b44f1 (diff)
NEWS: Add notes for 1.6.0 release
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+Release 1.6.0 (2008-04-10 Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>)
+=========================================================
+The cairo community is quite pleased to announce the 1.6.0 release of
+the cairo graphics library. This is a major update to cairo, with new
+features and enhanced functionality which maintains compatibility for
+applications written using cairo 1.4, 1.2, or 1.0. We recommend that
+anybody using a previous version of cairo upgrade to cairo 1.6.0.
+
+The most significant new features in this release are dramatically
+improved PDF and PostScript[*] output, support for arbitrary X server
+visuals (including PseudoColor), a new Quartz backend, and and a new
+"win32 printing" backend. See below for more details on these and
+other new features.
+
+New dependency on external pixman library (Thanks, Søren!)
+----------------------------------------------------------
+As of cairo 1.6, cairo now depends on the pixman library, for which
+the latest release can be obtained alongside cairo:
+
+ http://cairographics.org/releases/pixman-0.10.0.tar.gz
+
+This library provides all software rendering for cairo, (the
+implementation of the image backend as well as any image fallbacks
+required for other backends). This is the same code that was
+previously included as part of cairo itself, but is now an external
+library so that it can be shared by both cairo and by the X server,
+(which is where the code originated).
+
+Improved PDF, PostScript, and SVG output (Thanks, Adrian!)
+----------------------------------------------------------
+Users of the cairo-pdf, cairo-ps, and cairo-svg should see a dramatic
+improvement from cairo 1.2/1.4 to 1.6. With this release there are now
+almost no operations that will result in unnecessary rasterization in
+the PDF and PostScript. Rasterized "image fallbacks" are restricted
+only to minimal portions of the document where something is being
+drawn with cairo that is beyond the native capabilities of the
+document, (this is rare for PDF or SVG, but occurs when blending
+translucent objects for PostScript).
+
+This means that the final output will be of higher quality, and will
+also be much smaller, and therefore will print more quickly. The
+machinery for doing analysis and minimal fallbacks also benefits the
+win32-printing surface described below.
+
+In addition to doing less rasterization, the PostScript and PDF output
+also has several other improvements to make the output more efficient
+and more compatible with specifications.
+
+[*] Note: Just before this release, a bug has been reported that the
+PostScript output from cairo can crash some printers, (so far the
+following models have been reported as problematic Xerox Workcentre
+7228 or 7328 and Dell 5100cn). We will implement a workaround as soon
+as we can learn exactly what in cairo's output these printers object
+to, (and we could use help from users that have access to misbehaving
+printers). This bug is being tracked here:
+
+ Printing some PDFs from evince is crashing our Xerox printer
+ http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15348
+
+New support for arbitrary X server visuals (Thanks, Keith and Behdad!)
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+As of cairo 1.6, cairo should now work with an arbitrary TrueColor or
+8-bit PseudoColor X server visual. Previous versions of cairo did not
+support these X servers and refused to draw anything. We're pleased to
+announce that this limitation has been lifted and people stuck with
+ancient display systems need no longer be stuck with ancient software
+just because of cairo.
+
+New, supported Quartz backend for Mac OS X (Thanks, Brian and Vladimir!)
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+As of cairo 1.6, the cairo-quartz backend is now marked as "supported"
+rather than "experimental" as in previous cairo releases. Its API now
+has guarantees of API stability into future cairo releases, and its
+output quality is comparable to other backends. There have been
+significant improvements to cairo-quartz since 1.4. It now uses many
+fewer image fallbacks, (meaning better performance), and has greatly
+improved text rendering.
+
+New, "win32 printing" backend (Thanks, Adrian and Vladimir!)
+------------------------------------------------------------
+A new win32-printing surface has been added with an interface very
+similar to the original win32 surface, (both accept an HDC
+parameter). But this new surface should only be called with a printing
+DC, and will result in all drawing commands being stored into a
+meta-surface and emitted after each page is complete. This allows
+cairo to analyze the contents, (as it does with PDF, PostScript, and
+SVG backends), and to do minimal image-based fallbacks as
+necessary. The analysis keeps things as efficient as possible, while
+the presence of fallbacks, (when necessary), ensure the consistent,
+high-quality output expected from cairo.
+
+Robustness fixes (Thanks, Chris!)
+---------------------------------
+There has been a tremendous number of improvements to cairo's
+robustness. Areas that have been improved include:
+
+ * Proper reporting of errors
+
+ * Responding correctly to invalid input
+
+ * Avoiding integer overflows
+
+ * Avoiding memory leaks on error-recovery paths
+
+ * Making reference counting thread safe
+
+ * Exhaustive testing of memory allocation points
+
+Other fixes (Thanks, everybody!)
+--------------------------------
+Cairo's internal fixed-point representation has been changed from
+16.16 to 24.8. This has a direct impact on applications as it allows
+much larger objects to be drawn before internal limits in cairo make
+the drawing not work.
+
+The CAIRO_EXTEND_PAD mode is now fully supported by surface
+patterns. This mode allows applications to use cairo_rectangle and
+cairo_fill to draw scaled images with high-quality bilinear filtering
+for the internal of the image, but without any objectionably blurry
+edges, (as would happen with the default EXTEND_NONE and cairo_paint).
+
+Rendering with CAIRO_ANTIALIAS_NONE has been fixed to be more
+predictable, (previously image rendering and geometry rendering would
+be slightly misaligned with respect to each other).
+
+The reference manual at http://cairographics.org/manual now documents
+100% of the functions and types in cairo's public API.
+
+API additions
+-------------
+Several small features have been added to cairo with new API functions:
+
+cairo_format_stride_for_width
+
+ Must be called to compute a properly aligned stride value before
+ calling cairo_image_surface_create_for_data.
+
+cairo_has_current_point
+
+ Allows querying if there is a current point defined for the
+ current path.
+
+cairo_path_extents
+
+ Allows querying for path extents, (independent of any fill or
+ stroke parameters).
+
+cairo_surface_copy_page
+cairo_surface_show_page
+
+ Allow beginning a new document page without requiring a cairo_t
+ object.
+
+cairo_ps_surface_restrict_to_level
+cairo_ps_get_levels
+cairo_ps_level_to_string
+cairo_ps_surface_set_eps
+
+ Allow controlling the Post PostScript level, (2 or 3), to
+ target, as well as to generate Encapsulated PostScript (EPS).
+
+cairo_quartz_font_face_create_for_cgfont
+
+ Create a quartz-specific cairo_font_face_t from a CGFontRef.
+
+cairo_win32_font_face_create_for_logfontw_hfont
+
+ Create a win32-specific cairo_font_face from a LOGFONTW and an
+ HFONT together.
+
+Thanks, Everyone!
+-----------------
+I've accounted for 32 distinct people with attributed code added to
+cairo between 1.4.14 and 1.6.0, (their names are below). That's an
+impressive number, but there are certainly dozens more that
+contributed with testing, suggestions, clarifying questions, and
+encouragement. I'm grateful for the friendships that have developed as
+we have worked on cairo together. Thanks to everyone for making this
+all so much fun!
+
+Adrian Johnson, Alp Toker, Antoine Azar, Behdad Esfahbod,
+Benjamin Otte, Bernardo Innocenti, Bertram Felgenhauer,
+Boying Lu, Brian Ewins, Carl Worth, Chris Heath, Chris Wilson,
+Claudio Ciccani, Emmanuel Pacaud, Jeff Muizelaar, Jeremy Huddleston,
+Jim Meyering, Jinghua Luo, Jody Goldberg, Jonathan Gramain,
+Keith Packard, Ken Herron, Kouhei Sutou, Kristian Høgsberg,
+Larry Ewing, Martin Ejdestig, Nis Martensen, Peter Weilbacher,
+Richard Hult, Shailendra Jain, Søren Sandmann Pedersen,
+Vladimir Vukicevic
+
Snapshot 1.5.20 (2008-04-04 Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>)
===========================================================
This is the tenth snapshot in cairo's unstable 1.5 series. It comes
@@ -155,7 +345,6 @@ lack of coverage in our test suite):
CGFont backend returns 0 font extents
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15319
-
Snapshot 1.5.16 (2008-04-01 Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>)
===========================================================
This is the eighth snapshot in cairo's unstable 1.5 series. It comes
@@ -385,13 +574,6 @@ fixes the following bug:
Cairo doesn't support 8-bit pseudocolor visuals
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4945
-Unresolved issues (must be fixed before cairo 1.6)
---------------------------------------------------
-XXX: Need to decide if cairo_image_surface_create_for_data should be
-documented and tested as supporting an image with a negative
-stride. Also need to decide the correct return value for
-cairo_format_stride_for_width in case of any error.
-
Snapshot 1.5.12 (2008-02-28 Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>)
===========================================================
This is the sixth snapshot in cairo's unstable 1.5 series. It comes 1