[XaraXtreme-dev] Move from CDraw to Cairo

["Scheper, Erik-Berndt" <erik-berndt.scheper@xxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Bericht

I've seen two interesting snippets come by:

 

 

<snip 1>

So I agree with Alex that, if the worst comes to the worst, and we do not release CDraw, Cairo is a perfectly good fall back, and in some ways a better solution (e.g. because it's using the platform's standard rendering library instead). I know Inkscape have often mentioned a desire to move to Cairo for similar reasons. And so the sentiment that Xara Xtreme is useless without CDraw is plainly just not true.

</snip 1>

 

 

<snip 2>

To Charles Moir I say that if the work to move LX to Cairo is really 'a couple of days', can we organise a bounty on that move? As I say, I've already parted with ~$AUD200 in support of this project, and while that's not much compared to the effort asked of volunteer contributors, it's something that I as a non-programmer *could* do.

 

Under such a scenario, the work expense is covered (to some extentm whether Xara or volunteer/s do it), and then the OSS and commercial releases would have an additional differentiation (besides external commercial dependencies.)

 

As a backer of OSS (and a purchaser of commercial SW) I see a lot of value in Xara LX going to Cairo for the excellent reasons Carl Worth has offered, and since at least Mozilla are working on Cairo for Mac OS, it's likely to be hammered into shape on all OSes (esp. if you believe that HW accelerated Cairo isn't too far off.)

 

Instead of snipping, and arguing about shades of ideology, can't we just make this happen, for the pragmatic good of paying customers, and the wider community?

 

I want a good, easy-to-use application that I can point my graphics-inclined nephew to, the one I can recommend without trepidation to the local non-profit, and the one that affords me the type of seamless file inter-change that I expect in the professional industry, and IMHO the interests of the industry/community are best served by Xara LX being at least part of the solution.

</snip 2>

 

-------------------------------------------

 

From the comments made by Charles I do get the impression that 'the worst will come to the worst' and that CDraw will never be released. He just seems too fearful that someone will build a Windows version of Xtreme and release that as an open-source competitor to the commercial (Windows) version.

Also, there has not been ANY positive feedback on the idea to dual-license CDraw in a sense so that it Xtreme will ever be part of the 'standard' distiribution of Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. But Xara has to realize that until the day Xtreme is fully open-source (in such a way that it can be distributed in distro's), few (if any) developers will be willing to invest their time in a product.

 

So indeed the only viable way seems to convert Xtreme to Cairo.

 

But this raises many questions:

-Is this indeed realistic

-Is the documentation available? (What CDraw functions are called, what do they do, etc.

-Will it be ok to add missing functionality from CDraw to Cairo?

 

All these cumulating in the final questions

-How much work will it really be?

-What bounty would be required?

 

Many questions I think only those with insight in the CDraw code can answer.

 

Regards,

Erik-Berndt

 

 

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