[OpenJDK 2D-Dev] X11 uniform scaled wide lines and dashed lines; STROKE_CONTROL in Pisces

[Denis Lila]

Clemens, thanks for your reply.

> Its just my personal opinion, but I would recommend not implementing
> it.
> Xorg falls back to software anyway for anything more complex than
> solid rectangles and blits
> and those code-paths will only be triggered for non-antialised
> rendering with solid colors.
> 
> Implementing it in Pisces would help every backend OpenJDK supports
> :)

That makes sense. I think you're right.

 
> Just checked and I also ignore the STROKE_CONTROL stuff completly in
> the cairo based Jules rasterizer.
> Curious how that could be mapped to Cairo, do you know any more
> in-depth explanation how it works - or examples how it should look
> like?
> 
> Thanks, Clemens

Regarding VALUE_STROKE_NORMALIZE the API says:
                Stroke normalization control hint value -- geometry should
                be normalized to improve uniformity or spacing of lines and
                overall aesthetics. Note that different normalization 
                algorithms may be more successful than others for given 
                input paths. 

I can only think of one example where VALUE_STROKE_NORMALIZE makes a visible
difference between the closed source implementation and OpenJDK:
when drawing anti-aliased horizontal or vertical lines of width 1, Pisces 
draws a 2 pixel wide line with half intensity (because integer coordinates
are between pixels). Sun's jdk with VALUE_SROKE_NORMALIZE turned on draws
a 1 pixel line with full intensity. This could to achieved by just
checking for normalization and rounding coordinates to the nearest half 
pixel, but this solution seems too simple, and I'm not sure whether I'm missing
anything. It would also probably cause problems when drawing anti-aliased 
short lines (which is done when drawing any sort of curve)
Unless, of course, this rounding was restricted to just horizontal and 
vertical lines.

Regards,
Denis.