nj@magnolia.Berkeley.EDU (Narciso Jaramillo) (03/12/91)
In my spare time, I'm working on a freely redistributable object-oriented drawing program for Amiga computers. People have requested that I include a bitmap autotrace feature--i.e., one that would attempt to approximate a given bitmap by some set of objects. Unfortunately, I don't know any good algorithms for doing this. It would be relatively easy (for black-and-white bitmaps, at least) to set up a scan-line algorithm to keep track of object boundaries and trace them into lines or polygons, but figuring out when you're dealing with a curved boundary and tracing it into (say) a B-spline seems trickier. And, of course, trying to do all this with the minimum number of extraneous boundary lines requires some smarts. Does anyone know of any good algorithms for doing such autotracings? Thanks much. nj