The cl-cffi-cairo library is a Lisp binding to Cairo.

Cairo is a 2D graphics library that supports multiple output devices. Currently supported output targets include the X Window System (via both Xlib and XCB), Quartz, Win32, image buffers, and PostScript, PDF, and SVG file output.

Cairo is designed to produce consistent output on all output media types while taking advantage of display hardware acceleration, such as through the X Render Extension.

The Cairo API offers operations similar to those of the PostScript and PDF drawing operators. These operations include stroking and filling cubic Bézier splines, transforming and compositing translucent images, and rendering antialiased text. All drawing operations can be transformed by any affine transformation, such as scaling, rotating, or shearing.

This library is loaded from the cl-cffi-gtk4 library for a Lisp binding to GTK 4 and the cl-cffi-gtk3 library for a Lisp binding to GTK 3.

The cl-cffi-cairo library is licensed under the MIT license.

The cl-cffi-cairo library is ASDF installable:

(asdf:load-system :cl-cffi-cairo)

Get the Cairo version the library is running against:

(cairo:version-string)
=> "1.18.4"

The cl-cffi-cairo library runs successfully with SBCL and CCL on Ubuntu. It also runs on Windows with SBCL. It may run with other compilers and on other systems as well.

The Cairo API documentation is included in the cl-cffi-gtk4 API documentation.

The Cairo library comes with examples. Load the examples and switch to the package for the examples:

(asdf:load-system :cairo-example)
=> T
(in-package :cairo-example)
=> #<Package "CAIRO-EXAMPLE">

Execute one of the demo functions, for example:

(demo-pdf-draw)
=>
Draw function : DRAW-STROKE (400 x 400 size)
Save PDF to   : .../cairo/example/out/draw-stroke.pdf

The function is executed for the draw-stroke function with a size of 400 x 400 points. The demo function has three optional arguments. The first takes a symbol as the function designator for a drawing function. The second and the third arguments specify the desired width and height of the drawing context. If the third argument is omitted, the size of the drawing context is width x width. The following is an example of calling the demo function with all three arguments set to values different from the defaults:

(demo-pdf-draw 'draw-mask 350 400)
=>
Draw function : DRAW-MASK (350 x 400 size)
Save PDF to   : .../cairo/example/out/draw-mask.pdf

The cl-cffi-cairo library comes with a testsuite. The testsuite can be performed with

(asdf:test-system :cl-cffi-cairo)

or loaded and executed with

(asdf:load-system :cl-cffi-cairo/test)
=> T
(in-package :cairo-test)
=> #<PACKAGE "CAIRO-TEST">
(run! 'cairo-suite)
=>
Running test suite CAIRO-SUITE
 Running test suite CAIRO-VERSION-SUITE
  Running test CAIRO-VERSION-ENCODE .
  Running test CAIRO-VERSION .
  Running test CAIRO-VERSION-STRING .
 Running test suite CAIRO-VERSION-SUITE
 Running test suite CAIRO-STATUS-SUITE
  Running test CAIRO-STATUS-T ...............................................
  Running test CAIRO-STATUS-TO-STRING .....
 Running test suite CAIRO-STATUS-SUITE

...

 Running test suite CAIRO-PATH
  Running test CAIRO-PATH-STRUCTURE.1 ......................
  Running test CAIRO-PATH-STRUCTURE.2 .....
  Running test CAIRO-COPY-PATH ..........
  Running test CAIRO-COPY-PATH-FLAT .......
  Running test CAIRO-APPEND-PATH .........
  Running test CAIRO-CURRENT-POINT .......
  Running test CAIRO-NEW-PATH/SUB-PATH/CLOSE-PATH.1 ......
  Running test CAIRO-NEW-PATH/SUB-PATH/CLOSE-PATH.2 .........
  Running test CAIRO-PATH-EXTENTS ..
  Running test CAIRO-MOVE-TO/REL-MOVE-TO ..
  Running test CAIRO-LINE-TO/REL-LINE-TO ..
  Running test CAIRO-CURVE-TO ..
  Running test CAIRO-REL-CURVE-TO ..
  Running test CAIRO-RECTANGLE ..
  Running test CAIRO-ARC ..
  Running test CAIRO-ARC-NEGATIVE ..
  Running test CAIRO-GLYPH-PATH ..
  Running test CAIRO-TEXT-PATH ..
 Running test suite CAIRO-PATH
 Did 1126 checks.
    Pass: 1126 (100%)
    Skip: 0 ( 0%)
    Fail: 0 ( 0%)

Unfortunately, since many of the tests depend on the hardware or the local environment, so they will likely fail on your system. This issue may be resolved in the future.