Hi Juan,

Thanks for the screenshots, that helps a lot! Now, it would be ideal to
have a visual like this to for the comparison:
http://typekit.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/jensonw-900.png. But, I know
that you've got limited time to work on this, and such a thing wouldn't be
very high priority. Maybe down the road.

Also, comparing your renderer+stroke font to the recently open sourced
Adobe font rasterizer would be interesting, too (
http://blog.typekit.com/2013/05/01/adobe-contributes-cff-rasterizer-to-freetype/).
As far as I can tell, Adobe's rasterizer is pretty much the the
state-of-the-art rasterizer for outline font rasterization. If you're
making the case that outline fonts are intrinsically unable to match the
quality of your stroke font, this comparison would be a convincing way to
do so.

Going back to the topic of Morphic 3 rendering TrueType fonts,  I'm
attaching a few unfiltered zooms from your M3-TTF.png (your more recent
M3-TTF-5.png looks the same in these areas). Notice the saturated colors in
the middle of the black text. You mentioned that you have color fringing
problems with <9 point sizes, but this font is about 12pt and the problem
doesn't look like color fringing (i.e., the coloring isn't light nor just
on the fringes, see
http://typekit.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/gdi-cleartype.png for what I
understand color fringing to look like). Maybe something else is going on
here?

Back to your comments...I also like the idea of having a single rasterizer
for text and general graphics. At least one that can be just parametrized
or extended to handle text nicely as needed.

Yes, there is no question that one can improve on the visual output of the
popular rasterizers (cairo, skia, antigrain, qt, etc.). The question has
always been at what cost to software complexity and at what cost to
performance.

I wasn't able to mentally separate your rasterization code from the rest of
the Morphic 3 code (I'm not a big Smalltalker, so maybe it's just me), so I
couldn't evaluate the complexity cost. It also looked like there were
several optimizations mixed in that could have thrown off my understanding.

Would you be interested in creating a clean, totally not optimized (and
thus slow), stand alone version of the rasterizer just for exposition
purposes? Something for people like me to learn from? Again, I know you
have very limited time. No rush.

Dan

On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 6:38 AM, J. Vuletich (mail lists) <
juanli...@jvuletich.org> wrote:

>  Hi Dan,
>
> Quoting Dan Amelang <daniel.amel...@gmail.com>:
>
>  Hi Juan,
>>
>> Glad that you're making progress! One question: how hard would it be to
>> use a TrueType font (or any fill-based font) with your rasterizer?
>>
>
> It is some work, as the TrueType font needs to be imported. I already did
> this for DejaVu, printing a text sample to pdf, then converting that to svg
> with Inkscape, and then loading the svg in Cuis / Morphic 3 and using a
> "CodeGeneratingCanvas" to write the Smalltalk code for me. The attach is a
> sample image using just that font.
>
>  And, I would be interested in comparing the visual results of rendering
>> 1) a TrueType font via FreeType, 2) a TrueType font via your Morphic 3
>> rasterizer, 3) your stroke font via the Morphic 3 rasterizer.
>>
>
> Taking a look at the attach, and the original attach in the mail linked
> below, and comparing with FreeType samples (for example, the regular Cuis
> fonts), I think that (sorted by visual quality):
>
> a) For pointSize <=14
>   1) Morphic 3 / StrokeFont with autohinting
>   2) Feetype / TrueType with autohinting
>   3) Morphic 3 / TrueType (no autohinting possible yet)
> Note 1: For M3/TTF I could take the autohinting algorithm from Freetype,
> and quality would be at least on par with it, for point sizes >= 9
> Note 2: For point sizes < 9 (fills less than one pixel), M3/TTF produces
> color fringes. I think this can be enhanced with some work.
> I didn't spend much time on these issues, as I focused on StrokeFonts,
> that give best results, at least for a programming environment.
> Applications might need TTF, and there are possible enhancements to be done.
>
> b) Rotated text. Here the difference in quality is rather small.
>   1) Morphic 3 / StrokeFont (autohinting off)
>   2) Feetype / TrueType
>   3) Morphic 3 / TrueType
>
> c) Point sizes > 14. Here I think the three alternatives look really good,
> no autohinting is needed, and there is no clear winner. (Same would go for
> most point sizes on a Retina or other hi dpi display, such as phones.)
>
>      I know option 3) produces the best quality, I'm just interested in
>> the visual details. Such a comparison might also be helpful to showcase
>> and explain your work to others.
>>
>
> It is also worth noting that the usual Cairo + Freetype (or Cairo + Pango
> + Freetype) combo uses different algorithms for text and graphics, as
> Freetype can do much better than Cairo, but can not do general vector
> graphics. But Morphic 3 gives the same top quality for vector graphics too,
> as text is done simply by calling the svg like graphics primitives. Where
> Morphic 3 really stands out is when comparing against Cairo for drawing
> vector graphics!
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Cheers,
> Juan Vuletich
>
>
>> Dan
>>
>>    On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 6:25 AM, J. Vuletich (mail lists)
>> <juanli...@jvuletich.org> wrote:
>>
>>  Hi Dan, Folks,
>>>
>>> I finally published the Morphic 3 code in its current state. It is
>>> still unfinished, and in need of cleanup. I hope you are still
>>> interested in this stuff.
>>>
>>> See
>>> http://jvuletich.org/pipermail/cuis_jvuletich.org/
>>> 2014-September/001692.html
>>> I attached there a demo image with some SVG drawings, and some text at
>>> rather small sizes, and some rotated text too. This took me a lot of
>>> time,
>>> because for maximum text quality I had to design a new font, based on pen
>>> strokes (and not fills!). I based it on the technical lettering I learned
>>> at high school.
>>>
>>> I think I'm now close to the limit of what is possible on regular LCDs
>>> when trying to optimize crispness, absence of pixellation and absence
>>> of color fringes. What I need to do now is to fill in some details,
>>> then optimization and a VM plugin. Then it could become the default
>>> graphics engine for Cuis ( www.cuis-smalltalk.org[1] ).
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Juan Vuletich
>>>
>>> Quoting Dan Amelang <daniel.amel...@gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>
>>>  Hi Juan,
>>>>
>>>> I think it's great that you are sharing your rasterization approach.
>>>> So far it sounds pretty interesting. FWIW, after you've released the
>>>> code, I would be interested in using this approach to create a higher
>>>> quality, drop-in replacement for the current "Rasterize" stage in the
>>>> Gezira rendering pipeline.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Dan
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 6:24 PM, J. Vuletich (mail lists)
>>>> <juanli...@jvuletich.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  Hi Folks,
>>>>>
>>>>> The first defensive disclosure about Morphic 3 has been accepted and
>>>>> published at
>>>>>
>>>>>  http://www.defensivepublications.org/publications/prefiltering-
> antialiasing-for-general-vector-graphics
>
>> and http://ip.com/IPCOM/000232657 ..
>>>>>
>>>>> Morphic 3 is described at
>>>>> http://www.jvuletich.org/Morphic3/Morphic3-201006.html
>>>>>
>>>>> This paves the way for releasing all the code, as no one will be able
>>>>> to
>>>>> patent it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Juan Vuletich
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> fonc mailing list
>>>>> fonc@vpri.org
>>>>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> fonc mailing list
>>>> fonc@vpri.org
>>>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.cuis-smalltalk.org
>
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