TR2006-119

An Improved Representation for Stroke-based Fonts


    •  Jakubiak, E.J., Perry, R.N., Frisken, S.F., "An Improved Representation for Stroke-based Fonts", ACM SIGGRAPH, July 2006.
      BibTeX TR2006-119 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Jakubiak2006jul,
      • author = {Jakubiak, E.J. and Perry, R.N. and Frisken, S.F.},
      • title = {An Improved Representation for Stroke-based Fonts},
      • booktitle = {ACM SIGGRAPH},
      • year = 2006,
      • month = jul,
      • isbn = {1-59593-364-6},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2006-119}
      • }
TR Image
Figure 3. By combining A) a single stroke path with B) various stroke profiles, and C) various stroke ends, a rich variety of typefaces D) can be represented using very little memory. Because stroke profiles and stroke ends are repeated among glyphs both within and across typefaces, enhancing stroke-based fonts to represent multiple, expressive typefaces only requires an additional 80 KBs over the 250 KBs required for stroke-based Asian fonts.
Abstract:

Because a typical Asian typeface can consist of more than 12,000 glyphs, traditional scalable outline-based fonts require ~5-10 MBs of memory. This requirement is particularly problematic in mobile devices (e.g. cell phones and PDAs) and embedded systems (e.g. car navigation systems)where memory is at a premium. Existing commercial solutions (e.g. by Bitstream and Monotype Imaging) represent glyphs using simplified uniform-width strokes. However, these light-weigh (~250 KBs) stroke-based fonts lack the detail, expressiveness, and variety needed for optimal legibility and true cultural acceptance (Figure 1). Although METAFONT [Knuth 1986] is stroke-based and provides sufficient detail and expressiveness, it requires the type designer to be proficient in mathematics, rasterization and programming.

 

  • Related News & Events

    •  NEWS    ACM SIGGRAPH 2006: 7 publications by Paul Beardsley, Ron Perry, Darren Leigh, Ramesh Raskar and Jeroen van Baar
      Date: July 30, 2006
      Where: ACM SIGGRAPH
      Brief
      • The papers "Cartoon Dioramas in Motion" by Raskar, R., Ziegler, R. and Willwacher, T., "Non-photorealistic Camera: Depth Edge Detection and Stylized Rendering Using Multi-flash Imaging" by Raskar, R., Feris, R., Yu, J. and Turk, M., "RFIG Lamps: Interacting with a Self-Describing World via Photosensing Wireless Tags and Projectors" by Raskar, R., Beardsley, P., van Baar, J., Wang, Y., Dietz, P., Lee, J., Leigh, D. and Willwacher, T., "Designing with Distance Fields" by Frisken, S.F. and Perry, R.N., "An Improved Representation for Stroke-based Fonts" by Jakubiak, E.J., Perry, R.N. and Frisken, S.F., "iLamps: Geometrically Aware and Self-configuring Projectors" by Raskar, R., van Baar, J., Beardsley, P., Willwacher, T., Rao, S. and Forlines, C. and "Natural Video Matting using Camera Arrays" by Joshi, N., Matusik, W. and Avidan, S. were presented at ACM SIGGRAPH.
    •