On May 2, Keith Packard wrote:
 > So, we have the following constraints:
 > 
 >      1)      Sum of areas from arbitrary tesselation is unity
 >      2)      Invarient under translation
 >      3)      Should look "reasonable"
 >      4)      64 bit arithmetic
 >      5)      Within a factor of 2 of the fastest software algorithm that
 >              meets requirement 1) and 2)

Thinking about implementations, I can think of several things that
I believe meet these constraints. Some are faster than others, and I'm
guessing that any of them would "look reasonable".

The difficulty though, is not coming up with the implementation.

The hard part is coming up with a specification that is precise,
(assuming that by precise you mean that every pixel value can be
explicitly determined from the spec.), that allows flexibility in the
implementation.

Most of the implementation ideas I have could not be precisely
specified other than giving more or less the exact implementation.

It seems that to come up with a precise specification and still allow
flexibility in implementation we must nail down criterion #2 more
precisely. For example, what if the spec said that the alpha value
computed must be within some margin of error of the pixel area
covered.

Obviously, pixel area coverage is not the ideal basis for
specification, but it would be a reasonable standard against which to
verify and implementation. And, any better solution based on
anti-aliasing would likely be within the margin of error from pixel
area coverage.

So, that would be moving away from what I think you had in mind for
the definition of "precise", but it would prevent the specification
from mandating a non-useful implementation.

Would that be a reasonable tradeoff?

-Carl

-- 
Carl Worth                                        
USC Information Sciences Institute                 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3811 N. Fairfax Dr. #200, Arlington VA 22203              703-812-3725

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