Pixbuf stuff (rather long)

[Mlacage aol com]

hi, 

today, i looked at libart code : here are my questions

1) is there any documentation on libart (except the sources) ?

2) there has been some discussion lately on the gnome-canvas-image widget 
which used imlib and which is beeing ported to pixbuf... I don't realy 
understand this.
Let me know if i am wrong: pixbuf is a generic pixmap buffer (it is some 
generic data structure). Pixbuf may be used for allmost any kind of pixmap 
data: with alpha, without alpha... and libart strenght is that it aplies all 
its transformations on pixbuf, the generic pixmap buffer. That way, you get 
these transformations on both alpha/non alpha data which can then be 
displayed. Question: how is a pixbuf displayed ? i mean, is htere support in 
libart to display pixbufs or is libart just a library which handles these 
things without actually displaying them ? If libart does not display things, 
then the gnome-canvas-image widget is there for this. This, makes sense to me.
But, (yes, sorry :) ) if i am not wrong, the gnome-canvas proceeds as 
follows: let's imagine i have a jpeg image. i load it using imlib which 
generates some kind of gdk_imlib_pixmap (or something in the like), then i 
convert this milib data structure to a pixbuf, then i use libart to apply 
transformations. Last, i display the pixbuf.
Finaly, we are getting to The 2nd question: i hear thses people talking about 
getting rid of imlib. but right now, it is impossible because imlib is used 
to load the file content into memory. So, i assume there exist some new 
library which does nothing but reading files and generating brand new pixbuf 
buffers . If so, where can i find it ?

Mathieu