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28 Mar 2024 17:19:26 EDT (-0400)
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From: ingo
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 15 Jan 2019 08:44:00
Message: <XnsA9D895E03D406seed7@news.povray.org>
in news:XnsA9D88F544360Aseed7@news.povray.org ingo wrote:

> Iirc Inkscape can be used to extract a spline from a font for some
> experiments. 

:( that results in a Bezier spline we do not have as a spline ...

ingo


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 15 Jan 2019 15:12:30
Message: <5c3e3eae$1@news.povray.org>
Am 15.01.2019 um 07:38 schrieb ingo:
> Would it also be possible to make the fonts avalable as splines? Thinking
> of spheresweeps, sweeping spheres, lofting and extruding mesh's,

Technically that should certainly be possible - with some limitations 
though. Most notably, I expect such splines to be useless in animations, 
as the "time" values would presumably be arbitrary and unrelated to the 
actual length of the individual spline segments.


As an aside, the FreeType library also supports some font formats that 
are stroke-based rather than outline-based.

As for Bezier splines, it is a shame we don't have a common consistent 
spline framework across all spline-based features, and if I (or someone 
else?) ever find the time I hope that will change.


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 15 Jan 2019 16:14:54
Message: <5c3e4d4e$1@news.povray.org>
Am 15.01.2019 um 12:29 schrieb William F Pokorny:

>> So rather than investing any time and effort into refurbishing the 
>> somewhat redundant text primitive, I've instead invested some time and 
>> effort to see if it can be replaced with the prism primitive entirely. 
>> So far it seems as easy as eating pancakes.
> 
> And no doubt less sticky. :-)

If you're thinking of New England style pancaces, with maple syrup, then 
yes, most certainly ;)


> While updating the text primitive, are you giving any thought to right 
> to left and vertical syntax in addition to the existing left to right?

Yes, no and yes.

Yes, I did give some thought not only to left/right/vertical writing 
systems, but other text layout considerations as well, such as 
ligatures, scripts where the same character may have different shapes 
depending on context, Unicode variation sequences, or Unicode composite 
characters, and decided that I'll eventually want support for all of 
that in the `text` "primitive"

No, I decided to not implement any of that now.

Before deciding to go for FreeType, I had a look at HarfBuzz, but as it 
turns out it apparently requires FreeType as well, so I decided to aim 
low for now and use only FreeType, with the intent of adding HarfBuzz later.

Yes, I decided to structure the code in such a way that adding all those 
bells and whistles later should be relatively easy.

Most notably, I'm structuring the code into two distinct steps: Step 1 
will decide which glyphs to use and where to place them, while step 2 
will retrieve the corresponding glyph outlines and convert them to prism 
control points.

Right now FreeType will be used for both steps 1 and 2, with step 1 
being limited to a straightforward mapping of UCS code points to the 
corresponding "canonical" glyphs and simple left-to-right placement with 
kerning as the only "fancy" feature.

In the future, step 2 will presumably remain the domain of FreeType, but 
step 1 might be extended or even completely rewritten to provide more 
bells & whistles. One such extension might be the addition of bidi 
support, e.g. via fribidi, while another one might be the addition of 
full-fledged /text shaping/, e.g, via HarfBuzz.


> Aside: My recollection from looking at the text object back when I was 
> playing with the hard and soft objects is that certain font-encodings 
> support overlapping polygon regions by being strict about the 2d winding 
> order of the path outlines for the definition of inside and outside as 
> opposed to the crossing test we use. Perhaps some kind of crossing test 
> compatible normalization is necessary if supporting what FreeType 
> supports? Perhaps too an issue for later as I have no idea how common 
> overlapped encoding is...

I am aware of this category of issues, but intend to address them as 
they come up, and no sooner. Right now I'm happy that the default 
behaviour exhibited by the prism object seems to perfectly match the 
most commonly used fill mode.


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From: Le Forgeron
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 18 Jan 2019 11:53:34
Message: <5c42048e$1@news.povray.org>
Le 15/01/2019 à 14:44, ingo a écrit :
> in news:XnsA9D88F544360Aseed7@news.povray.org ingo wrote:
> 
>> Iirc Inkscape can be used to extract a spline from a font for some
>> experiments. 
> 
> :( that results in a Bezier spline we do not have as a spline ...
> 
> ingo
> 
Well, not officially.

Can some one remind me about NURBS ?

And which order is the Bezier spline from Inkscape ?


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From: ingo
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 19 Jan 2019 05:32:22
Message: <XnsA9DC75648B3F6seed7@news.povray.org>
in news:5c42048e$1@news.povray.org Le_Forgeron wrote:

> And which order is the Bezier spline from Inkscape ?
> 
> 

... they have two control points per segment ...

ingo


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From: Cousin Ricky
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 25 Jan 2019 16:42:48
Message: <5c4b82d8$1@news.povray.org>
On 2019-01-10 11:01 PM (-4), clipka wrote:
> In the wake of changing the TrueType font handling, I found out that the 
> fonts we're currently shipping with POV-Ray are crap. Total and utter 
> crap. Not from an artistic point (that could be debated), but from 
> conceptual and technical points. [...]

You're just noticing?

> Let's start with a look at the choice of fonts: We have a serif font 
> (`timrom.ttf`) and a sans-serif (`crystal.ttf`) font. So far, so good.

Crystal is monospace in addition to san-serif.  Artistically, it can use 
a bit of kerning, but IMHO so can most other monospace fonts, and this 
is already handled by the existing text object anyway.

> But when we look beyond ASCII characters, pretty much all we have is in 
> a third font (`cyrvetic.ttf`), and it is... no, not Unicode, that would 
> be too much to expect...

Which is why BrightStar5 lists a Unicode font--user's choice--as a 
prerequisite.  Fortunately, it's hard to find a computer without them 
nowadays.

> no, not the most widespread non-Unicode 
> extension to ASCII, namely Windows-1252... no, it's Cyrillic. I mean 
> come on, seriously? You can give us "дерьмо", but not good old German 
> "Scheiße", despite some key developers having been German speakers? Or 
> "flûte", pardon my French, despite a great tradition of French-speaking 
> community members?

Am I to understand that you're teaching us to cuss in Russian now?

Greek letters would have been quite useful to me.  But not stuck down in 
the 00A0 - 00FF range.  :P


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 25 Jan 2019 23:02:16
Message: <5c4bdbc8@news.povray.org>
Am 25.01.2019 um 22:42 schrieb Cousin Ricky:
> On 2019-01-10 11:01 PM (-4), clipka wrote:
>> In the wake of changing the TrueType font handling, I found out that 
>> the fonts we're currently shipping with POV-Ray are crap. Total and 
>> utter crap. Not from an artistic point (that could be debated), but 
>> from conceptual and technical points. [...]
> 
> You're just noticing?

I knew they weren't great. I never knew they were /this/ bad.


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From: Mike Horvath
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 27 Jan 2019 21:35:45
Message: <5c4e6a81$1@news.povray.org>
On 1/10/2019 10:01 PM, clipka wrote:
> Dang, there should be a `povray.rants` newsgroup, where it is clear from 
> the get-go that any post there is to blow off steam, not step on 
> anyone's toes.

I would support this.


Mike


PS - Are non-POVray fonts (e.g. Arial, Courier New) negatively affected 
by all the Scheiße?


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From: Mike Horvath
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 27 Jan 2019 21:44:28
Message: <5c4e6c8c$1@news.povray.org>
On 1/15/2019 3:12 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 15.01.2019 um 07:38 schrieb ingo:
>> Would it also be possible to make the fonts avalable as splines? Thinking
>> of spheresweeps, sweeping spheres, lofting and extruding mesh's,
> 
> Technically that should certainly be possible - with some limitations 
> though. Most notably, I expect such splines to be useless in animations, 
> as the "time" values would presumably be arbitrary and unrelated to the 
> actual length of the individual spline segments.

Since you are doing all this already, could you add full support for SVG 
(as prism objects)? Thanks man!

I'm (sort of) of joking. LOL


Mike


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Fonts Rant
Date: 27 Jan 2019 22:42:00
Message: <5c4e7a08$1@news.povray.org>
Am 28.01.2019 um 03:35 schrieb Mike Horvath:

> PS - Are non-POVray fonts (e.g. Arial, Courier New) negatively affected 
> by all the Scheiße?

They're following the standard, so they would have been ok.


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