Re: xfree will be the best....

Allen Akin wrote:

>On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 10:24:48PM +0200, Marco Bubke wrote:
>| Allen Akin wrote:
>| 
>| >Other very interesting questions include whether hinting can be
>| >implemented by vertex programs, and whether performance/quality can be
>| >enhanced by breaking glyphs into curve-bounded "trapezoids" that can be
>| >processed by vertex programs or evaluators without triangulation by the
>| >host CPU.
>| > 
>| >
>| There are AFAIK not very much GPU's(Geforce 3/4) outwhere which are 
>| doing elevators in hardware.  And you can't use vertex array for elevators.
>
>It's true that evaluators tend to be accelerated only on high-end
>hardware.  I thought NVIDIA had released an extension for curve and
>surface acceleration that was intended to replace evaluators on consumer
>hardware, but I can't find it at the moment.
>  
>

AFAIK its removed on NV30.

>It doesn't matter for this situation, though.  All you need to do is put
>the control points in parameter registers, then feed the parametric
>coordinate to the vertex program using vertex arrays or any other method
>of your choice.  Then a simple computation in the vertex program
>generates the points along the edge curves.  Generate them alternately
>(first one edge, then the other) and you've got a triangle strip.
>
>I should emphasize that I don't *know* this will work; I just think it's
>worth the experiment.  It would be a good project for someone wanting to
>learn more about vertex programming.
>  
>
I must admit that I don't know the vertex program extension(I'm to lazy 
to learn assembler) only glslang. It sounds interesting but I'm not sure 
there is a advantage to do it on the GPU. If you do it you should use 
IMHO render to texture for caching. Is the glyth rendering a bottleneck?

Marco