opengl

What is DirectFB?

The graphics device on your computer is really just a big virtual drawing space in hardware with a defined set of calls to create picture changes. It has some functions to accelerate 2/3D drawing operations.

Generally these operations are implemented by the Xserver Driver which binds to the Abstracted VESAfb or actual device driver i.e. atidrv. However it is better to define an abstraction layer between the Xserver and the hardware driver; and this is what DirectFB does - in fact this is the same approach as DirectDraw2D in Windows.

Cairo is a vector graphics library designed to provide high-quality display and print output.

Currently supported output targets include the X Window System, OpenGL (via glitz), in-memory image buffers, and image files (PNG and PostScript). Initial work has begin on support for PDF file output. Cairo is designed to produce identical output on all output media while taking advantage of display hardware acceleration when available (eg. through the X Render Extension or OpenGL).

Cairo provides a stateful user-level API with capabilities similar to the PDF 1.4 imaging model.