Boolean Operations on Cairo Paths?

Question

Is there any way to build paths in Cairo by combining two paths together through Boolean operations such as Union, Difference, and Intersection? I'm working on a vector graphics application that uses Cairo to do its rendering and would like to give my users the ability to combine paths together in this manner, but I can't find a way to do it in Cairo.

Answer 1

I haven't found a way to do this with the cairo libraries. But it's a feature I've been looking for too. Would definitely be helpful when (for example) stroking the combination of two paths - compositing operators mentioned by ntd don't seem to be able to do this.

In the meantime, I'm trying to write scripts for inkscape, and letting inkscape do the unioning/differencing. Acceptable for the problem I'm working on but definitely not for yours. Have you had any luck, either with cairo or any other svg library? After a couple days of googling, it doesn't seem to be trivial :/