Re: [whatwg] Enabling LCD Text and antialiasing in canvas

On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 4:59 AM, Stephen White <senorblanco@chromium.org>wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Rik Cabanier <cabanier@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Robert O'Callahan <robert@ocallahan.org
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> I think a fully automatic solution that tries to use subpixel AA but is
>>> always able to render grayscale AA if needed is the way to go. Possibly
>>> with an author hint to suggest opting into a more expensive rendering path.
>>
>>
> Here are the problems I see with that approach:
>
> 1)  In order to avoid a performance hit for existing content, it still
> requires a spec change (the hint)
> 2)  Even with the hint, when the author knows they want LCD AA, they still
> incur a performance penalty of drawing to two buffers.
> 3)  It still can't handle all cases, such as canvas -> WebGL, which will
> have to remain grayscale-only, even when the author knows it would be safe
> for their application.
>

I agree those are problems. All of the available options have problems.

Also, what form should this authoring hint take?  Is it going to explicitly
> call out LCD AA?  In that case, how is it better than an opt-in canvas
> attribute?  If it doesn't explicitly call out LCD AA, but that's the only
> effect it has, what should it be called?
>

Perhaps we could use "text-rendering:optimizeLegibility" on the canvas
element.

I also have concerns that the knowledge of when it's safe to use the LCD AA
> buffer is going to spread throughout the browser codebase, even in areas
> which currently have no knowledge of canvas, in order to handle all the
> special cases.  This may just be an implementation detail (and may be
> avoidable, this is TBD), but it does have the potential to introduce
> dependencies or complicate implementation.
>

Maybe.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if we're going down the automatic road,
> why do we need a new function/attribute?  Why not simply detect when a
> canvas-sized fillRect() has been performed with an opaque fillStyle?  This
> would also allow optimization of existing content.


I agree.

Rob
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Received on Saturday, 23 February 2013 11:49:15 UTC