lansd@dgp.toronto.edu (Robert Lansdale) (02/23/91)
I am looking for a contouring routine in C that will apporoximate the outline of a bitmap image with a series of connected line segments and spline curves. Any pointers or references would be appreciated. Thanks. --> Rob Lansdale -- Robert Lansdale - (416) 978-6619 Dynamic Graphics Project Internet: lansd@dgp.toronto.edu Computer Systems Research Institute UUCP: ..!uunet!dgp.toronto.edu!lansd University of Toronto Bitnet: lansd@dgp.utoronto Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4, CANADA
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (02/24/91)
lansd@dgp.toronto.edu (Robert Lansdale) writes: > I am looking for a contouring routine in C that will apporoximate the > outline of a bitmap image with a series of connected line segments and > spline curves. Any pointers or references would be appreciated. > Thanks. You probably want to start with the SIGGRAPH 1893 Proceedings, ACM/SIGGRAPH Quarterly, July 1983, "Curve-Fitting with Piecewise Parametric Cubics", Micheal Plass and Maureen Stone, pages 229-239, seven figures, 29 reference bibliography, which shows a nice serif'ed font (from MetaFont (computer modern, perhaps?)) converted back from the bitmaps to splines. If you have a Citations index handy, this should be cited in most of the relevant work. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
karl@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Karl Berry) (02/24/91)
Besides the Plass&Stone article, a thesis from the University of Washington is very useful: Phoenix: an interactive curve design system based on the automatic fitting of hand-sketched curves, by Philip J. Schneider, Master's thesis, University of Washington, 1988. I found his algorithms much easier to follow than M&S's; however, they are oriented towards arbitary curves being drawn on a screen, not for fitting fonts. To do a good job of fitting characters, especially at resolutions <, say, 2000dpi, requires much more effort. M&S is not a cookbook, either. I have written a program to do font fitting (starting from a GF or PK font) for the Free Software Foundation; it is not yet ready for even beta release. (The fitting works well enough, but I want to produce at least one font from start to finish with it before release; that takes a lot of time.) I will give it to people who need it now, nonetheless, with even more disclaimer than usual. karl@cs.umb.edu