NEWS: Add release notes for 1.4.0 release

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+Release 1.4.0 (2007-03-06 Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>)
+=========================================================
+The many people[*] who have been working hard on cairo are very
+pleased to announce the long-awaited release of cairo 1.4. This
+release comes 4 months after the last stable update release (1.2.6)
+and 9 months since the initial release of 1.2.0.
+
+The release notes below are intended to capture the highlights of the
+changes that have occurred from the 1.2 series to the new 1.4.0
+release.
+
+Performance improvements
+------------------------
+Within the cairo project, the last 6 months or so has seen an intense
+effort focusing on the performance of cairo itself. That effort has
+paid off considerably, as can be seen in the following highlights of
+some of the performance differences from cairo 1.2.6 to cairo 1.4.0:
+
+• Dramatic improvement when drawing objects that are mostly off-screen
+  with the image backend (with the xlib backend this case is still
+  slow due to an X server bug):
+
+  image-rgba       long-lines-uncropped-100  479.64 ->  4.98: 96.24x speedup
+  ███████████████████████████████████████████████▋
+
+• Dramatic improvement when copying a small fraction of an image
+  surface to an xlib surface:
+
+   xlib-rgba              subimage_copy-512    3.93 ->  0.07: 54.52x speedup
+  ██████████████████████████▊
+
+• Dramatic improvement to tessellation speed for complex objects:
+
+  image-rgb              tessellate-256-100  874.16 -> 34.79: 25.13x speedup
+  ████████████▏
+   xlib-rgba        zrusin_another_fill-415  148.40 -> 13.85: 10.72x speedup
+  ████▉
+   xlib-rgb                  world_map-800  680.20 -> 345.54:  1.97x speedup
+  ▌
+
+• Dramatic improvement to the speed of stroking rectilinear shapes,
+  (such as the outline of a rectangle or "box"):
+
+  image-rgb          box-outline-stroke-100    0.18 ->  0.01: 24.22x speedup
+  ███████████▋
+   xlib-rgb          box-outline-stroke-100    0.46 ->  0.06:  8.05x speedup
+  ███▌
+
+
+• Dramatic improvements to text rendering speeds:
+
+   xlib-rgba       text_image_rgba_over-256   63.12 ->  9.61:  6.57x speedup
+  ██▊
+
+• 3x improvements to floating-point to fixed-point conversion speeds:
+
+  image-rgba      pattern_create_radial-16     9.29 ->  3.44:  2.70x speedup
+  ▉
+
+• 2x improvements to linear gradient computation:
+
+  image-rgb     paint_linear_rgb_source-512   26.22 -> 11.61:  2.26x speedup
+  ▋
+
+• 2x improvement to a case common in PDF rendering:
+
+  image-rgb              unaligned_clip-100    0.10 ->  0.06:  1.81x speedup
+  ▍
+
+• 1.3x improvement to rectangle filling speed (note: this improvement
+  is new since 1.3.16---previously this test case was a 1.3x slowdown
+  compared to 1.2.6):
+
+  image-rgba                 rectangles-512    6.19 ->  4.37:  1.42x speedup
+  ▎
+  xlib-rgba                  rectangles-512    7.48 ->  5.58:  1.34x speedup
+  ▏
+
+NOTE: In spite of our best efforts, there are some measurable
+performance regressions in 1.4 compared to 1.2. It appears that the
+primary problem is the increased overhead of the new tessellator when
+drawing many, very simple shapes. The following test cases capture
+some of that slowdown:
+
+  image-rgba    mosaic_tessellate_lines-800   11.03 -> 14.29:  1.30x slowdown
+  ▏
+  image-rgba           box-outline-fill-100    0.01 ->  0.01:  1.26x slowdown
+  ▏
+  image-rgba        fill_solid_rgb_over-64     0.20 ->  0.22:  1.12x slowdown
+
+  image-rgba       fill_image_rgba_over-64     0.23 ->  0.25:  1.10x slowdown
+
+   xlib-rgb     paint_image_rgba_source-256    3.24 ->  3.47:  1.07x slowdown
+
+We did put some special effort into eliminating this slowdown for the
+very common case of drawing axis-aligned rectangles with an identity
+matrix (see the box-outline-stroke and rectangles speedup numbers
+above). Eliminating the rest of this slowdown will be a worthwhile
+project going forward.
+
+Also note that the "box-outline-fill" case is a slowdown while
+"box-outline-stroke" is a (huge) speedup. These two test cases
+resulted from the fact that some GTK+ theme authors were filling
+between two rectangles to avoid slow performance from the more natural
+means of achieving the same shape by stroking a single rectangle. With
+1.4 that workaround should definitely be eliminated as it will now
+cause things to perform more slowly.
+
+Greatly improved PDF output
+---------------------------
+We are very happy to be able to announce that cairo-generated PDF
+output will now have text that can be selected, cut-and-pasted, and
+searched with most capable PDF viewer applications. This is something
+that was not ever possible with cairo 1.2.
+
+Also, the PDF output now has much more compact encoding of text than
+before. Cairo is now much more careful to not embed multiple copies of
+the same font at different sizes. It also compresses text and font
+streams within the PDF output.
+
+API additions
+-------------
+There are several new functions available in 1.4 that were not
+available in 1.2. Curiously, almost all of the new functions simply
+allow the user to query state that has been set in cairo (many new
+"get" functions) rather than providing any fundamentally new
+operations. The new functionality is:
+
+• Getting information about the current clip region
+
+  cairo_clip_extents
+  cairo_copy_clip_rectangle_list
+  cairo_rectangle_list_destroy
+
+• Getting information about the current dash setting
+
+  cairo_get_dash_count
+  cairo_get_dash
+
+• Getting information from a pattern
+
+  cairo_pattern_get_rgba
+  cairo_pattern_get_surface
+  cairo_pattern_get_color_stop_rgba
+  cairo_pattern_get_color_stop_count
+  cairo_pattern_get_linear_points
+  cairo_pattern_get_radial_circles
+
+• Getting the current scaled font
+
+  cairo_get_scaled_font
+
+• Getting reference counts
+
+  cairo_get_reference_count
+  cairo_surface_get_reference_count
+  cairo_pattern_get_reference_count
+  cairo_font_face_get_reference_count
+  cairo_scaled_font_get_reference_count
+
+• Setting/getting user data on objects
+
+  cairo_set_user_data
+  cairo_get_user_data
+  cairo_pattern_set_user_data
+  cairo_pattern_get_user_data
+  cairo_scaled_font_set_user_data
+  cairo_scaled_font_get_user_data
+
+• New cairo-win32 functions:
+
+  cairo_win32_surface_create_with_ddb
+  cairo_win32_surface_get_image
+  cairo_win32_scaled_font_get_logical_to_device
+  cairo_win32_scaled_font_get_device_to_logical
+
+API deprecation
+---------------
+The CAIRO_FORMAT_RGB16_565 enum value has been deprecated. It never
+worked as a format value for cairo_image_surface_create, and it wasn't
+necessary for supporting 16-bit 565 X server visuals.
+
+A sampling of bug fixes in cairo 1.4
+------------------------------------
+  • Fixed radial gradients
+  • Fixed dashing (degenerate and "leaky" cases)
+  • Fixed transformed images in PDF/PS output (eliminate bogus repeating)
+  • Eliminate errors from CAIRO_EXTEND_REFLECT and CAIRO_EXTEND_PAD
+  • cairo_show_page no longer needed for single-page output
+  • SVG: Fix bug preventing text from appearing in many viewers
+  • cairo-ft: Return correct metrics when hinting is off
+  • Eliminate crash in cairo_create_similar if nil surface is returned
+  • Eliminate crash after INVALID_RESTORE error
+  • Fix many bugs related to multi-threaded use and locking
+  • Fix for glyph spacing 32 times larger than desired (cairo-win32)
+  • Fixed several problems in cairo-atsui (assertion failures)
+  • Fix PDF output to avoid problems when printing from Acrobat Reader
+  • Fix segfault on Mac OS X (measuring a zero-length string)
+  • Fix text extents to not include the size of non-inked characters
+  • Fix for glyph cache race condition in glitz backend (Jinghua Luo)
+  • Fix make check to work on OPD platforms (IA64 or PPC64)
+  • Fix compilation problems of cairo "wideint" code on some platforms
+  • Many, many others...
+
+Experimental backends (quartz, XCB, OS/2, BeOS, directfb)
+---------------------------------------------------------
+None of cairo's experimental backends are graduating to "supported"
+status with 1.4.0, but two of them in particular (quartz and xcb), are
+very close.
+
+The quartz baceknd has been entirely rewritten and is now much more
+efficient. The XCB backend has been updated to track the latest XCB
+API (which recently had a 1.0 release).
+
+We hope to see these backends become supported in a future release,
+(once they are passing all the tests in cairo's test suite).
+
+The experimental OS/2 backend is new in cairo 1.4 compared to cairo
+1.2.
+
+Documentation improvements
+--------------------------
+We have added documentation for several functions and types that
+were previously undocumented, and improved documentation on other
+ones.  As of this release, there remain only two undocumented
+symbols: cairo_filter_t and cairo_operator_t.
+
+[*]Thanks to everyone
+---------------------
+I've accounted for 41 distinct people with attributed code added to
+cairo between 1.2.6 and 1.4.0, (their names are below). That's an
+impressive number, but there are certainly dozens more that
+contributed with testing, suggestions, clarifying questions, and
+encouragement. I'm grateful for the friendships that have developed as
+we have worked on cairo together. Thanks to everyone for making this
+all so much fun!
+
+Adrian Johnson, Alfred Peng, Alp Toker, Behdad Esfahbod,
+Benjamin Otte, Brian Ewins, Carl Worth, Christian Biesinger,
+Christopher (Monty) Montgomery, Daniel Amelang, Dan Williams,
+Dave Yeo, David Turner, Emmanuel Pacaud, Eugeniy Meshcheryakov,
+Frederic Crozat, Hans Breuer, Ian Osgood, Jamey Sharp, Jeff Muizelaar,
+Jeff Smith, Jinghua Luo, Jonathan Watt, Joonas Pihlaja, Jorn Baayen,
+Kalle Vahlman, Kjartan Maraas, Kristian Høgsberg, M Joonas Pihlaja,
+Mathias Hasselmann, Mathieu Lacage, Michael Emmel, Nicholas Miell,
+Pavel Roskin, Peter Weilbacher, Robert O'Callahan,
+Soren Sandmann Pedersen, Stuart Parmenter, T Rowley,
+Vladimir Vukicevic
+
 Snapshot 1.3.16 (2007-03-02 Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>)
 ===========================================================
 New API functions
@@ -2518,7 +2767,7 @@ This is the first snapshot to include a functional win32 backend,
 
 	#include <cairo-win32.h>
 
-	void 
+	void
 	cairo_set_target_win32 (cairo_t *cr,
 				HDC      hdc);