Joshua A. Andler wrote:
Just curious, how good is Cairo's PDF backend?
I made one PDF with Cairo via rsvg-convert a week or two ago. It seems to rasterize the output by default. When I dig around in the Cairo PDF code I can see that it has some routines for writing "real" PDF data. Through the grapevine I heard (and may be totally wrong) that they just haven't gotten around to coding the compromise between what people want and what PDF will do, ie rasterize only when needed.
From my (uneducated) vantage point Cairo PDF and uberconvertor PDF offer the best range of possibility. Both are important and need to be pursued for the SVG to PDF landscape to be useful to the greatest range of people. Cairo will be a WYSIWYG printing option; Uberconvertor will preserve the structure and meaning.
I don't personally need PDF output very badly, but I'm almost sick enough of hearing about the problem to start working on a fix. :-) We do desperately need people to organize and decompose the task so that a stream of people would be able to put a bit of work toward the goal as the spirit moves them. At this time the task isn't really approachable because no one knows where we stand or what to do next.
Aaron Spike