So I'm currently seeing if a windows explorer thumbnail extension for SVG files is possible. This is achieved by writing a small COM object (encased in a DLL) which is loaded by windows and which paints the thumbnail of the file into an HBITMAP on demand. Initially I thought that I could just load up the cairo shared library, and render the SVG with that - except I've just found out that cairo itself doesn't render SVGs; you need librsvg to do that. Obviously we shouldn't add this dependancy, especially considering inkscape already has a renderer.

So I'm wondering if it's possible to load the inkscape renderer in a shared library.

Question: How does inkscape and inkview work? Do they just load up a libinkscape shared library? If so, then my extension could load this same library, and get it to do the drawing. But does the library even exist any more? I can't see inkview in the daily builds at the moment (has it been withdrawn?), and certainly no libinkscape - I assume it's static linked to inkscape.exe now.

But if such a library existed, I think I could use it to make thumbnails quite happily; although it would be quite bulky library to load.

Any suggestions?

Joel