Bezier Curves and Type Design: A Tutorial

Re:Bezier Curves and Type Design: A Tutorial by __david__ on Monday May 12, 2014 @04:55AM (#7731723)

That was pretty good, right up until the end. There's a curve that the author manually subdivides into 4 separate curves without any justification. With all the talk in the earlier sections about number of points it takes to render a curve, why would you add a bunch of points to a curve which is mathematically equivalent to the original?

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Re:Bezier Curves and Type Design: A Tutorial by scannerlicker on Monday May 12, 2014 @10:15AM (#7732772)

It's a two way: file size (amount of points) and rasterization issues.

Since every DTP program has it's own (or multiple) rasterization algorithms (and the same goes for printers) we have to deal with these too. It's about balance. :)

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Re:Bezier Curves and Type Design: A Tutorial by __david__ on Monday May 12, 2014 @01:47PM (#7734247)

So it's an upfront hedge to work around poorly written rasterizers?

I would love to see some examples of the bad rasterization this kind of thing fixes. I think that would be an interesting article/addition.

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Re:Bezier Curves and Type Design: A Tutorial by tfinniga on Monday May 12, 2014 @05:12AM (#7731764)

I think it's to make the conversion from cubic to quadratic more predictable.

In my experience designing tools, artists often prefer predictable over optimal.

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