The first beta version of the PECL/Cairo extension has just been released. This version includes support for loading arbitrary fonts via Freetype, cloning matrices, and has a rather large set of bug fixes. If you've been using 0.1.0 for anything at all I'd really recommend an upgrade. Windows builds will appear soon over at perisama.net for all the major PHP variants courtesy of Elizabeth M. Smith. Many thanks to Mark Skilbeck for helping get this release working on Windows!
I've got 3 posts or so queued up in my mind to write out, but some of them rather depend on doing other things first, so this will just be a quick note to say I have an article in the most recent php|architect magazine on the subject of "Vector Graphics with Cairo". This is a basic introduction to the PECL/Cairo extension which I've been helping out on for a while now. Thanks to Keith Casey for his input, to the folks at php|architect for letting me do it, and the long-suffering Elizabeth Marie Smith for putting up with all my stupid questions while working on this and other extensions!
Now, back to my regularly scheduled coding...
The first alpha of the PECL Cairo extension I've been helping out with has been released. Please download it, play with it, try and break it, and file bugs if you do! There isn't an official manual yet (for licencing-related reasons which I'm hoping to sort out soon), but I'll update this post when there is one. For now, there is a lot of stuff in the examples/ directory in the source which can be used as inspiration.