FW: Text rendering issues with gm convert and unifont

I am trying to render plain text to fax and I need to support as wide a
range of characters as possible, ideally the whole Unicode BMP.

Combining gm convert with unifont might meet this requirement, as long
as I can get it to render cleanly.

The simplest approach is:

gm convert -font /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont.ttf
-pointsize 12 -density 204x196 -units PixelsPerInch -geometry
1728x2292\! -depth 1 -monochrome -compress fax /tmp/4778.txt /tmp/test.tif

This renders quite well, but I need a border. If I add a border with
-border 100 -borderColor white the border is external to the specified
geometry, so the output is the wrong size.

If I adjust the geometry to -geometry 1528x2092\! to leave space for the
border the text renders very poorly

I have tried rendering it at the original size, with the border added
and resizing:

gm convert -font /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont/unifont.ttf
-pointsize 12 -density 204x196 -units PixelsPerInch -geometry
1728x2292\! -depth 1 -border 100 -borderColor white -monochrome
-compress fax /tmp/4778.txt /tmp/test.tif

gm convert -density 204x196 -units PixelsPerInch -resize 1728x2292\!
-monochrome -depth 1 -compress fax /tmp/test.tif /tmp/resized.tif

This leaves ragged edges on the text.

I have a very limited understanding of text rendering and I have run out
of ideas. Is there a sensible solution to this problem that will give me
reasonable output quality?

It doesn't have to be graphicsmagick based, but I would prefer it not to
be a proprietary solution.

Neil Youngman


Neil Youngman
Developer
Wirefast Limited

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