RE: Shadows and Borders

[Adam Meyerowitz]

At 08:52 PM 9/11/00 -0400, Feinberg, Matthew wrote:
> There's nothing built into FreeType that I know of, if that's what you
> mean.  IIRC, there was some talk a while ago on the list about stroking
> glyph outlines -- you might try searching the mailing list archives, or
> maybe someone else on the list can help.


What exactly do you mean by stroking the glyph outlines?  I have implemented
shadowing and bordering before using glyph bitmaps but I don't think it is the
most elegant way, or maybe it was.

Basically I use a second buffer and for each pixel do a shadow or border.
For a border I move up and to the left border pixels and then draw a filled 
rectangle
border*2+1 wide and high.  Then I combine both buffers (the glyph and the 
border
buffer) to make a single bordered character buffer.  For a shadow I 
basically do what
you mentioned for each pixel and then combine the two buffers.

This might be the only way, but I thought there might be some other more 
interesting
ways.

Thanks for the response,
Adam


> As for shadows, it depends what kind.  The easiest thing is to draw the
> text twice.  First draw it in either a dark color or with alpha blending
> (or both) to get the shadow, then draw it again in the foreground color
> to get the text.  You want to apply some kind of transformation to the
> shadow when you draw it so it's not covered up by the text :o)  The
> simplest thing is to just to translate the shadow-- draw it a pixel or
> two off to the side and down, then draw the text on top of it.  With the
> right transformations you could probably also create other kinds of
> shadow styles.
>
> --Matthew
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Adam Meyerowitz [mailto:address@hidden
> > Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 8:01 PM
> > To: address@hidden
> > Subject: Shadows and Borders
> >
> >
> > Sorry if this is a repost.  I am not sure it got around.
> >
> > Hello All,
> >
> > I am new to this list so excuse me if this has been asked
> > before.  Is there
> > any mechanism to add
> > shadows (extrusions), and borders to rendered glyphs.  If
> > there isn't, are
> > there any know algorithms
> > that can do this efficiently.  I would consider coding them
> > up if there are.
> >
> > Any help would be appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Adam
> >