Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] Font metrics and kerning update

["Jonathan Payne" <jonathanwilliampayne@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I wrote the original kerning code for Xara X so I might be able to add
something to this discussion.

I seem to remember the cache size is small because there was little
advantage in making it any larger.  You gain the most from the cache
when you are rendering a large amount of text which would typically be
in the same font.  In that case, the code caches the kerning pairs for
the font the user has selected to avoid having to make lots of slow
operating system calls for each character.  The cache allows for more
than one font  so the user does not get bad performance if they happen
to include a word or two in a different font in a large block of
otherwise plain text.  For a small block of text, the overhead of a
few operating system calls should be negligible so the total number of
fonts used in a document isn't too important.

I remember doing some benchmarks and found that the cache made a
reasonable difference with large text blocks.   As for the point Alex
raised about not reformatting on every draw, I don't remember if the
code has this optimisation (I suspect it does) but even so, a cache is
still useful as reformatting could be quite frequent.  For example I
think most of these operations could cause reformats: sizing text,
changing fonts, contours and blends.

Hope this helps.

Jonathan

On 19/04/06, Alex Bligh <alex@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> --On 19 April 2006 18:01 +0100 Charles Moir <CharlesM@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > But without any caching does that mean we'd have to call Freetype during
> > display? That sounds a recipe for really slow text rendering.
>
> Whilst I'm sure (re)introducing a cache is a good idea and I agree
> with Martin's comments re the inadvisability of reading up to (2^32)^2
> kerning pairs ( :-) ), I don't actually see how this affects /rendering/
> speed.
>
> Is rendering done from an outline cache, and the positions of those
> outlines themselves are (surely) cached when the text is formatted?
> Surely the worst this can do is affect formatting speed? (yes I
> agree it would still be a good plan to fix it). I hope we are
> not doing a reformat every time we do a rerender.
>
> Alex
>