[Freegis-list] Geospatial graphics library based on Cairo?

[Ari Jolma]

Hello,

Does anybody know of a geospatial graphics library that is built on 
Cairo? Would anybody be interested in starting a project to build one? I 
know we have Mapnik, which seems to be very good etc (I haven't tried 
it), and maybe others but my point here is Cairo. Having a Cairo based 
library, would open up possibilities for building GTK (Since 2.8, GTK+ 
does most of its drawing using Cairo.) and Gnome geospatial applications.

Cairo (http://cairographics.org/) from it web page: Cairo is a 2D 
graphics library with support for multiple output devices. Currently 
supported output targets include the X Window System, Win32, image 
buffers, and PostScript, PDF, and SVG file output. Experimental backends 
include OpenGL (through glitz), Quartz, and XCB.

I've been wanting to have a library like this for a while now. Basically 
the library would use the services of Cairo and GDAL (and OGR). It would 
be written in C.

I'm not very sure what would be the best way to feed the style etc. 
information into the library. OGR has at least some support for styles, 
but I'm thinking that the usage of this library would be more in "visual 
geoanalytics" and thus the styling information needs to be very flexible 
and extendable.

Regards,

Ari

-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Geoinformaatio- ja paikannustekniikka
Geoinformation and positioning technology
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
POBox 1200, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://www.tkk.fi/~jolma