What they wanted was to have the same display code driving both screen and printer. Literal WYSIWYG. X doesn't (and can't ever) work like that. Which is not a knock on X, it's just the reality that Apple have their own priorities which are not necessarily the same as the traditional Unix world.
Cairo can, and does work that way. There are current cairo backends for X11, Postscript, PDF, flat image buffers, OpenGL, SVG, win32, quartz, and no doubt a bunch of others I'm forgetting. The whole point of the thing was to have a robust, path-based imaging model that works everywhere.
This is now 4 year old technology. Please flame with more current criticism. :)
Your implication seems to be that Cairo doesn't work on an accelerated backend? That's not correct. It is correct that the primitive assembly happens client side in Cairo, which I'm not sure is a misfeature. The IPC overhead of DPS was always one of its biggest problems.
Actually, there are other devices, like the Openmoko Neo 1973 and Neo Freerunner, which have much higher DPI screens. The iPhone has a resolution of 480x320, at 3.5", for 160dpi; the Neos have a 2.8" 640x480 resolution screen, at 280dpi. It's really nice to look at and read text on. :)
Wow thats incredible. I haven't seen a Neo in the flesh, I would love to get one of they work here in Australia.
I have an older iphone, I find its quite easy to read at that DPI, but the Neo DPI could be much better (I hear the kindle looks like reading paper, need to check that out, once again, we probably can't use it here yet !).
It sucks being in the "ass end" of the world sometimes.
That's awesome - I don't think I've ever seen a display that close to print quality. Its a pity the styling and software don't seem very consumer friendly.
