Undesirable Centerline text behavior

[DickB]

Can you post an example?

[lynnfrwd]

Sounds like a job for Chris Davis tomorrow.

[FWMiller]

Can you post an example?

Here's a screenshot from designer 1.187 with 1" tall letters. The one that's highlighted shows the jagged vector path that the bit follows and you can clearly see the effects in the centerline rendering. The machine carves exactly what you see in the rendering. Larger or smaller size makes no difference.

[bergerud]

That is curious. True type fonts are not jagged. Why would the programmers introduce this "noise"? The situation in 2.0 is a little different I think. Things do look smoother if the size is increased.

(I think it all boils down to having to deal with the hardware problem of x tracking.)

[mca]

Pre 2.0 we did not have access to the glyph vectors in TrueType fonts. Now we do and can generate much smoother centerline paths. Here is an example of the centerline path generated in 2.007 for the same 1" tall 'A' as above and how it looks on the virtual board:

Keep in mind that the resolution of the "chips" on the virtual board are only 128/inch on a square grid, emulating/rendering at higher resolutions proved too slow for too many of our users computers.
Non-horizontal/vertical vector cuts will appear to have jaggies on the virtual board not present when carved on the machine, assuming a sharp bit and tight-grain wood.

[FWMiller]

Well that answers a question I've had for some time on the specifics of the centerline improvements in 2.0. That gives me a bit more incentive to upgrade sooner. I had seen other screen shots where the 2.0 rendering didn't seem any better so it wasn't clear that the generated paths were much smoother. Thanks for the explanation.

[DickB]

Thanks Mark. Any thoughts on the original issue of this post?

[Ton80]

Pre 2.0 we did not have access to the glyph vectors in TrueType fonts. Now we do and can generate much smoother centerline paths. Here is an example of the centerline path generated in 2.007 for the same 1" tall 'A' as above and how it looks on the virtual board:

Keep in mind that the resolution of the "chips" on the virtual board are only 128/inch on a square grid, emulating/rendering at higher resolutions proved too slow for too many of our users computers.
Non-horizontal/vertical vector cuts will appear to have jaggies on the virtual board not present when carved on the machine, assuming a sharp bit and tight-grain wood.

So from what you said here it can be assumed that all that jaggedness seen in the preview IS NOT seen in the actual carve and instead the lettering is very smooth? I would like to see actual examples of virtual board and the resulting carves of the virtual board since I have long wondered why a font carved with all that jaggedness that doesn't appear when you print the font at a large resolution. Like FWMiller, I have always found that the virtual board in 1.187 has been very accurate to what I'm going to see once carved and I've tried to find fonts that exhibit very little of the jagged lines. If I were to upgrade to 2.x based on this post I would expect my centerline projects to no longer have any very noticeable jaggedness once carved.

[DickB]

Sorry, I still don't understand what the fuss is about. This is a map I did so long ago I don't remember when with Designer 1. "Bertha" lettering is under 1/2" tall and "Whitefish" about 1-3/4" tall. Do you see any jaggedness?

[Ton80]

Maybe I'm being overly picky about how Centerline carves but there is jaggedness is that image above that I will note is most likely not visible in the actual font glyphs. It becomes more noticeable on a carved board when you paint in the centerline carve with black paint for maximum contrast. I frequently have to spend 30 minutes or more cleaning up centerline carves with a dremel.

I just posted a new thread this morning asking for screenshots of a particular font. I had forgotten all about this thread from earlier in this year.

I noted what I would consider jaggedness added by Centerline that would not be present in your font file if viewed on screen.