Modify theme api to use cairo - any chance to get that in?

[Clemens Eisserer <linuxhippy gmail com>]

Hello,

Currently non-gtk application using gtk's theme API suffer a lot
because it requires a GdkDrawable to be passed.
Use-cases which require access to pixel data (like Firefox,
Thunderbird, Java, ...) or translucency information need to read-back
the data from the xserver causing context-switches and GPU stalls.

I wrote a patch to the theme api and the default theme about 2 years
ago (bug 515600), but was told I should wait for GTK3.
The changes would be backward compatible (old themes would still
work), applications could detect at runtime wether a "cairo"-theme was
used or not  and use more efficient code-paths when available.

It seems GTK3 has still some way to go, so would there be any way to
get this into GTK2?
I would really like to work on this, I just want to avoid spending
days and nobody listens again.

Thank you in advance, Clemens