Anti-aliased fonts?

[iPodFoo]

Anybody know if Rockbox will ever include support for anti-aliased fonts like truetype or postscript?

And also, if there will be more advanced "formatting" options for the text? Be nice to set a border width to stop text being nudged right up to the edge or set kerning or paragraph spacing etc?

Its at times like this I wish I was a programmer rather than a designer.  

ps. How do you get the "new" banner next to your topic in this forum?

[Llorean]

The "New" banner just shows up in topics where there are posts that you haven't read.

Antialiased fonts are *extremely* unlikely. Doing the antialiasing realtime would be exceptionally slow and bad for battery life. On players that have them, they're usually pre-rendered, not something that meshes well with customizable backdrops and such like we have.

[iPodFoo]

Shame anti-aliased fonts cant be used. makes quite a difference it quality. I take it, it would be too much to compute if you mapped each character to an image, even if it was just for white backgrounds?

What about my other question about extra formatting options? Such as different font sizes on the same page? Or able to kern or set margins etc?

Cheers.

[Llorean]

Why would you do it just for white backgrounds?

Different fonts (which would include sizes) and margins are planned features eventually. I'm not really sure how well kerning could be supported, at all.

[iPodFoo]

I spose kerning isnt important.

I look forward to when the formatting features are implemented.  

Cheers.

[madsic]

Why would you do it just for white backgrounds?

Different fonts (which would include sizes) and margins are planned features eventually. I'm not really sure how well kerning could be supported, at all.

... white or any other monochrome background because then the anti-aliasing could be done with that colour in mind. Say a black font on white background, which should have grey intermediate pixels. Black on blue should have black-blueish pixels etc....

Just to say that I'd like that too (and I'm sure the developers care deeply....   )

[pabouk]

This problem is not so hard to solve. For example values of pixels if the font is rendered in black could be multiplied with values of background pixels.

So 100% black (value 0) pixel of the font would give 100% black and 50% gray would give colour of the backround darkened to 50% of the brightness of the original background.

[LinusN]

Now do the math and see how much slower this will get with a fixed-point multiplication for each rendered pixel.

[pabouk]

I agree that it would be much slower than the current solution. I just wanted to point out that it is possible to have a solution with pre-rendered antialiased fonts even without an alpha mask.
If someone wants to make a patch we could see the real speed

[Llorean]

You do realize that with monochrome fonts, what you've described is a font that is *solely* a form of alpha mask.

[3ngel]

I would like to put up this thread, 'cause after some time i wanted to see if there were any progress in antialiased fonts, 'cause my intention was (as ever) to switch to rockbox.

Reading this thread i rightly understood that doing a "realtime" antialiasing is cpu consuming and it's not possible with ipod (or others CPU).

My idea i already said in another post was to add support for COLOR fonts, or at least GREYSCALE fonts. In this way one could do a pre-renderized set of colored or greyscale antialiased fonts.

I did not receive reply to this suggestion, so i would ask now, what do you think about it (that is add support for color/greyscale fonts)?

[Llorean]

How could this work without translucency.

[3ngel]

Because there would be no need for translucency.
The aliased fonts would be pre-rendered and adapted to the specific theme, for example on white background.
The only color hole would be (in the extreme case) on the background of the font character, that is a simple one color hole.
The concept of color fonts presume that each set is adapted to the theme that uses it.
Obviosly that wont work that well on pictures background, but you can't have anything, and in every case this would be better that not having any antialias in any case

[Llorean]

So the whole font system should be rewritten for a change that only works on the few themes that have a solid color background that is identical in all screens, and that we should increase the font buffer, as is necessary for this, at the cost me everyone who does not use a theme designed like this?

[3ngel]

Well, i don't know if this is so complicated to develop.
My suggestion is just one for those who don't use a picture background, but a solid background, and i think it's kinda 50%.
Don't take it personally, i think the more the options available the best a program is
It would be something like "I want to do or use a theme with a solid background and i have this goodies of antialiased fonts"

EDIT:
Or you can do just a switch for the theme that can signal the core that uses color fonts. In other case the kernel uses standard fonts.