Hi Ronie,

Below you said:

The problem with asForm, is that the form returned can be used after the cairo surface which holds the pixels is garbage collected.

I cannot reproduce this case. You gave a script:

surface := AthensCairoSurface extent: 640@480.
surface drawDuring: [ :canvas |
surface clear: Color blue.
].

surface asForm asMorph openInWindow

I see a blue window.

Cheers,

Alexandre

How about changing AthensCairoSurface >> asForm into the following definition?:
asForm

    "create a form and copy an image data there"
    | form |
    self checkSession.

    self flush.
    form := Form extent: (self width@self height) depth: 32.
    form unhibernate.
    LibC memCopy: self getDataPtr to: form bits size: self width*self height*4.
    ^ form

This involves a whole copy, but it removes completely the dependency on the surface plugin.

If we want to keep using the surface plugin with Cairo, the old definition of asForm still has a bug, which can be reproduced with the following snippet:

Smalltalk compiler evaluate: '
| surface |
surface := AthensCairoSurface extent: 640@480.
surface drawDuring: [ :canvas |
    surface clear: Color blue.
].

surface asForm asMorph openInWindow
'

The problem with asForm, is that the form returned can be used after the cairo surface which holds the pixels is garbage collected.