The Weekly Juan #10: "Cheap, High Quality Fonts in Squeak"

tim Rowledge tim at rowledge.org
Sat Apr 28 04:38:40 UTC 2007


On 27-Apr-07, at 7:13 PM, Juan Vuletich wrote:

>
> The problem I see with using a line for each char is that I  
> wouldn't be able to take the bitmap from the display, it would be  
> too big. And it won't be easy to edit with a text editor to tweak  
> glyphs at will... I know it is laborious to prepare the bitmap, but  
> it is dog-simple. I guess this needs some more thinking.

Since we do, in fact, have plugin code to render very high quality  
anti-aliased fonts within Squeak, why not simply render each char  
glyph to a Form, derive the appropriate metrics, add the Form to a  
composite Form for the StrikeFont glyphs and get all the tedious work  
done for almost free?

One nontrivial problem with simple StrikeFont type solutions is the  
kerning pair issue. Systems like Cairo put a fair bit of effort into  
getting that right and it does make a difference to the visual effect.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Not enough sense to come in out of the rain.





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