surface, an SVG file would simply specify the shape with a style attribute. That said, the models are not incompatible; many SVG renderers use Cairo for heavy lifting. Example Quite complex "Hello world" graphics can be drawn with the help of Cairo with only a few lines of source code: #include <cairo-svg.h> #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { cairo_surface_t *surface = cairo_svg_surface_create("Cairo_example.svg", 100.0, 100.0); cairo_t *cr = cairo_create(surface); /* Draw the squares in the background */ for (int x = 0; x < 10; ++x) for (int y = 0; y < 10; ++y) cairo_rectangle(cr, x * 10.0, y * 10.0, 5, 5); cairo_pattern_t *pattern = cairo_pattern_create_radial(50, 50, 5, 50, 50, 50); cairo_pattern_add_color_stop_rgb(pattern, 0, 0.75, 0.15, 0.99); cairo_pattern_add_color_stop_rgb(pattern, 0.9, 1, 1, 1); cairo_set_source(cr, pattern); cairo_fill(cr); /* Writing in the foreground */ cairo_set_font_size (cr, 15); cairo_select_font_face (cr, "Georgia", CAIRO_FONT_SLANT_NORMAL, CAIRO_FONT_WEIGHT_BOLD); cairo_set_source_rgb (cr, 0, 0, 0); cairo_move_to(cr, 10, 25); cairo_show_text(cr, "Hallo"); cairo_move_to(cr, 10, 75); cairo_show_text(cr, "Wikipedia!"); cairo_destroy(cr); cairo_surface_destroy(surface); } Notable usage Cairo is popular in the open source community for providing cross-platform support for advanced 2D drawing. GTK, starting in 2005 with version 2.8, uses Cairo to render the majority of its graphical control elements. Since GTK version 3, all the rendering is done using Cairo. A program called found in Debian allows for taking vector (SVG, PDF, or PostScript) screenshots of GTK 3 applications. The Mono Project, including Moonlight, has been using Cairo since very early in conception to power the back-ends of its GDI+ (libgdiplus) and System.Drawing namespaces. The Mozilla project has made use of Cairo in its Gecko layout engine, used for rendering the graphical output of Mozilla products. Gecko 1.8, the layout engine for Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and SeaMonkey 1.0, used Cairo to render SVG and <canvas> content. Gecko 1.9, the release of Gecko that serves as the basis of Firefox 3, uses Cairo as the graphics back-end for rendering both web page content and the user interface (or "chrome"). The WebKit framework uses Cairo for all rendering in the GTK and EFL ports. Support has also been added for SVG and <canvas> content using Cairo. The Poppler library uses Cairo to render PDF documents. Cairo enables the drawing of antialiased vector graphics and transparent objects. The vector graphics application Inkscape uses the Cairo library for its outline mode display, as well as for PDF and PostScript export since release 0.46. The original version of Manim