Text in OpenGL

Text in OpenGL

[Orlin Grigorov]

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I've been struggling with this one.  I'm developing an application, and I'm
using the gtkgl.area, and drawing some OpenGL renderings with lablgl.
Please, any suggestions on the best way to display text?   Anything
available already, especially some texture mapped text libraries that I can
use?

Thank you in advance.  Although this is my first post, I'm a very frequent
reader of this list!

Cheers,

Orlin

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Re: [Caml-list] Text in OpenGL

[Jon Harrop]

On Sunday 07 October 2007 05:00:56 Orlin Grigorov wrote:
> I've been struggling with this one.  I'm developing an application, and I'm
> using the gtkgl.area, and drawing some OpenGL renderings with lablgl.
> Please, any suggestions on the best way to display text?   Anything
> available already, especially some texture mapped text libraries that I can
> use?
>
> Thank you in advance.  Although this is my first post, I'm a very frequent
> reader of this list!

Our Smoke Vector Graphics library is a high-performance renderer of arbitrary 
2D vector graphics with high-resolution real-time zooming and panning of 
vector scenes. In particular, it contains facilities for rendering the 
computer modern fonts. See the third demo in the distribution for an example:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/smoke_vector_graphics/

You can fill and stroke the font glyphs, of course. We also have mathematical 
typesetting code if you need it (and have a budget!).

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Text in OpenGL

[Vu Ngoc San]

Orlin Grigorov a écrit :
> I've been struggling with this one.  I'm developing an application, and 
> I'm using the gtkgl.area, and drawing some OpenGL renderings with 
> lablgl.  Please, any suggestions on the best way to display text?   
> Anything available already, especially some texture mapped text 
> libraries that I can use?
> 
> Thank you in advance.  Although this is my first post, I'm a very 
> frequent reader of this list!
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Orlin
>


well it is possible to use sdl for this. There are functions for reading 
any truetype font file you have into a sdlvideo image. It actually 
directly renders any string to an image. Then you have to convert it to 
an opengl texture. It is not so difficult. Of course, since you are 
actually using gtkgl this may sound a bit circumvoluted, and there is 
probably a simpler way to do it. (?)

San

Re: [Caml-list] Text in OpenGL

[Orlin Grigorov]

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Thank you all for the suggestions.  Yes, the Smoke Vector Graphics library
looks like is extremely professional and good job.   Still, I need something
easy and small, and I thought more about the "image to texture" suggestion,
and I think I found something, which will definitely work good for my
purposes.  I decide to give it a try by going through latex, which will
produce a dvi file, then use "convert" to make it into a suitable format for
importing into an OpenGL texture.

What do you think?

On 10/7/07, Vu Ngoc San <san.vu-ngoc@ujf-grenoble.fr> wrote:
>
> Orlin Grigorov a écrit :
> > I've been struggling with this one.  I'm developing an application, and
> > I'm using the gtkgl.area, and drawing some OpenGL renderings with
> > lablgl.  Please, any suggestions on the best way to display text?
> > Anything available already, especially some texture mapped text
> > libraries that I can use?
> >
> > Thank you in advance.  Although this is my first post, I'm a very
> > frequent reader of this list!
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Orlin
> >
>
>
> well it is possible to use sdl for this. There are functions for reading
> any truetype font file you have into a sdlvideo image. It actually
> directly renders any string to an image. Then you have to convert it to
> an opengl texture. It is not so difficult. Of course, since you are
> actually using gtkgl this may sound a bit circumvoluted, and there is
> probably a simpler way to do it. (?)
>
> San
>
>

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Re: [Caml-list] Text in OpenGL

[Chris Campbell]

For a simple alternative you could also try using something like
http://tdb.fi/ttf2png.shtml to generate a mosaic texture which you can
then load and plaster on some quads.

Regards,
Chris

Re: [Caml-list] Text in OpenGL

[Jon Harrop]

On Sunday 07 October 2007 20:08:27 Orlin Grigorov wrote:
> Thank you all for the suggestions.  Yes, the Smoke Vector Graphics library
> looks like is extremely professional and good job.   Still, I need
> something easy and small, and I thought more about the "image to texture"
> suggestion, and I think I found something, which will definitely work good
> for my purposes.  I decide to give it a try by going through latex, which
> will produce a dvi file, then use "convert" to make it into a suitable
> format for importing into an OpenGL texture.
>
> What do you think?

Yes. You might find it easier to render using Smoke (just tweak the demo) and 
capture the glyphs as pixmaps using OpenGL.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Text in OpenGL

[Vu Ngoc San]

Orlin Grigorov a écrit :
> Thank you all for the suggestions.  Yes, the Smoke Vector Graphics 
> library looks like is extremely professional and good job.   Still, I 
> need something easy and small, and I thought more about the "image to 
> texture" suggestion, and I think I found something, which will 
> definitely work good for my purposes.  I decide to give it a try by 
> going through latex, which will produce a dvi file, then use "convert" 
> to make it into a suitable format for importing into an OpenGL texture.  
> 
> What do you think?
> 

I have done this too, it works quite well. Instead of convert I used the 
pgnalpha device of gs, which is very good for managing transparency.
Then I loaded the image into GL using SDL, which, in your case, should 
probably be done differently.

Good luck

San