How are curves rendered in font systems? I see that we can draw points but how are vectors (like in SVG) gets converted to pixels (PNG) and how does that process happen real time when I adjust font size?
Staffashchu
@simonguozirui That's a great question! There's a variety of factors that play into factor here: operating system, font formats, browsers/softwares, etc. Different operating systems use different techniques to render fonts (i.e. think Android emojis vs Apple emojis). For fonts specifically, there's a technique called hinting that allows fonts to be viewed at a high quality in different OSs. The secret to converting vectors to a grid of pixels is through rasterization and sampling. When it comes to how this process happens in real time and can adjust, you can think of SVGs as mathematical equations where we can find exact instructions on how we want to output each pixel.This website which talks a bit more in-depth about font rendering. You'll dive deeper into all of this in the next lecture too!
Sicheng-Pan
Font design is not the full story of typography. The other major part is the art to layout these pretty fonts on paper or screen properly. TeX is a great achievement in Computer Science that can help people to accomplish this task automatically.
How are curves rendered in font systems? I see that we can draw points but how are vectors (like in SVG) gets converted to pixels (PNG) and how does that process happen real time when I adjust font size?
@simonguozirui That's a great question! There's a variety of factors that play into factor here: operating system, font formats, browsers/softwares, etc. Different operating systems use different techniques to render fonts (i.e. think Android emojis vs Apple emojis). For fonts specifically, there's a technique called hinting that allows fonts to be viewed at a high quality in different OSs. The secret to converting vectors to a grid of pixels is through rasterization and sampling. When it comes to how this process happens in real time and can adjust, you can think of SVGs as mathematical equations where we can find exact instructions on how we want to output each pixel.This website which talks a bit more in-depth about font rendering. You'll dive deeper into all of this in the next lecture too!
Font design is not the full story of typography. The other major part is the art to layout these pretty fonts on paper or screen properly. TeX is a great achievement in Computer Science that can help people to accomplish this task automatically.