vkvg VS msdfgen

Hi, I don't know where to ask this, so, since we're talking about Pango, a GNOME project, I ask it here. There's this library called [`vkvg`](https://github.com/jpbruyere/vkvg) which follows the Cairo API and uses Vulkan as backend, and I thought it would be a good idea to port `pangocairo` to "`pangovkvg`". I created a repository [here](https://github.com/Rubo3/pangovkvg) and I'm focusing on porting it to Linux, so I removed the CoreText and Win32 code. [Here](https://github.com/jpbruyere/vkvg/issues/66) is the issue used to coordinate between `vkvg` and `pangovkvg`. Is there anybody interested and willing to help?

I'd like to develop native Wayland programs, and I don't really want to use toolkits like Qt or GTK, I need something just above OpenGL or Vulkan which only draws to a surface, I handle the rest. cairo + pango are a very nice pair, but cairo is mostly dead, the only way to make it Wayland native is through its OpenGL context, which unfortunately is still experimental even after many years. I found about VKVG, which wants to be Cairo based upon Vulkan, but that's "in early development stage". Generally I find dead drawing libraries, full toolkits or game engines which I don't want, or low level libraries. It seems to me that Linux doesn't have a solid middle-level graphics library anymore, or am I missing something? Do you know some libraries to recommend?

I tried cairo + pango as they are a nice pair, but cairo's OpenGL support is only experimental. So I found about VKVG, but that's "in early development stage". I don't want to use a full toolkit, just a stable library which abstracts raw graphics APIs, as the ones I've mentioned. Which ones do you recommend?

This very well explained here https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen and with more details in link d pdf.

Basically, signed distance fields allow high resolution renders from low resolution rasters which represent character shape.

No idea how to help you but I will just drop this since it improved the quality for me by 1000 https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen

And that's the complicated state of the art version for 3D perspective. Other versions are even simpler.

This is known as a “multi-channel signed distance field”, or “msdf”.

https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen

I use this, free and has been very good for me https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen

Distance fields are not slow to render. They don't need a powerful gpu. Valve was already using SDF for textures in 2007 and released a paper about it. MSDF (multi channel signed distance fields) is a popular text libraries for game engine devs that uses distance fields. Distance fields are fast to render in 2D and even 3D. The problem is with everything around it. Lighting, shadows, shading will all require specialized tooling and likely a specialized engine for very little benefit (imo).

Signed distance fields only work well for relatively simple characters.

If you have highly detailed characters like Chinese or emojis, you need larger resolution to faithfully represent every detail. One way to get around excessive memory requirements is to store the characters in their default vector forms and only render the required characters on demand, but then you might as well render them at the required pixel resolution and do away with the additional complexity of SDF rendering.

SDFs are still useful though if you have to render text at many different resolutions, for example on signs in computer games, as seen in the original paper https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2007/SIGGRAPH2007...

In the past, SDFs also had problems with sharp corners, which has been solved in https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen

MSDFGen looks pretty sweet. https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdfgen