Can you talk a bit about text rendering? How does it compare to slug? [1] Would it be suitable for rendering text heavy applications? (like, say, a PDF viewer, a code editor, web browser, etc).
The Rive renderer takes an animation-first approach to all path rendering, including text. Meaning, every glyph is redrawn from raw bezier curves with full precision antialiasing, every frame. (Just like any other path.)
This optimizes the smoothness of animation, is fast enough to render fullscreen pages on top of pages of high dpi text at 120fps (on a decent GPU), and the antialiasing quality is always full precision in the (0..255) color channels.
If you want more niche text-specific features like hinting and clear text, those aren’t supported because they don’t animate smoothly and/or don’t work as well with colors other than black and white.
I recommend trying all the options for your specific needs and finding what works best!
How is antialiasing implemented in the Rive renderer? It doesn't appear to be using MSAA. I took a look at the source code, I found some shaders that mention coverage and AA, but I cannot figure out how it works.
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1: https://sluglibrary.com/