Cairo drawing on Windows and integration of Opal

[Gregory Casamento]

All,

I wanted to remind everyone of this discussion now that we've finished
our last release.

One of the things that was being discussed/considered for a future
release is the refactoring of the existing backend using Opal so that,
like CoreGraphics, it becomes more interoperable with AppKit.  I
realize that there is a version of the existing Cairo backend on
Windows, it's currently experimental only.

One other thing I'd like to push is the use of Cairo on Windows.  Up
until now we've used GDI which is, officially, deprecated by Microsoft
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Device_Interface).   Cairo on
Windows uses GDI+.

I'm not simply pushing this change because Cairo is popular, but
because it eliminates a number of issues on Windows for us
automatically.  Right now we can't do certain types of compositing on
Windows due to limitations of the existing backend.  Cairo would give
us this automatically.   Additionally, the deprecated GDI API which
are currently using will not be updated with new features, nor is it
hardware accelerated on Windows versions later than Vista.  Cairo,
using GDI+, on Windows WILL have hardware acceleration.

Please let me know if you guys have any thoughts about this.

GC
-- 
Gregory Casamento - GNUstep Lead/Principal Consultant, OLC, Inc.
yahoo/skype: greg_casamento, aol: gjcasa
(240)274-9630 (Cell)