Added the possibility to specify asymmetrical distance range (-arange, -apxrange)
Added the ability to export the shape into an SVG file (-exportsvg)
Edge coloring no longer colors smooth contours white, which has been found suboptimal
Fixed incorrect scaling of font glyph coordinates. To preserve backwards compatibility, the user has to enable the fix with an explicit additional argument:
-emnormalize in standalone, FONT_SCALING_EM_NORMALIZED in API for coordinates in ems
-noemnormalize in standalone, FONT_SCALING_NONE in API for raw integer coordinates
The default (backwards-compatible) behavior will change in a future version; a warning will be displayed if neither option is set
Added two new developer-friendly export image formats: RGBA and FL32
-size parameter renamed to -dimensions for clarity (old one will be kept for compatibility)
generate*SDF functions now combine projection and range into a single argument (SDFTransformation)
Conversion of floating point color values to 8-bit integers adjusted to match graphics hardware
Improved edge deconvergence procedure and made sure that calling Shape::normalize a second time has no effect
Fixed certain edge cases where Skia geometry preprocessing wouldn't make the geometry fully compliant
The term "perpendicular distance" now used instead of "pseudo-distance" (PSDF instead of PseudoSDF in API)
Fixed a bug in savePng where fclose could be called on null pointer
Minor code improvements
Version 1.11 (2023-11-11)
Reworked SVG parser, which now supports multiple paths and other shapes - requires Skia
Major performance improvements due to inlining certain low-level classes
A limited version of the standalone executable can now be built without any dependencies
Fixed listFontVariationAxes which previously reported incorrectly scaled values
Fixed potential crash when generating SDF from an empty Shape
Fixed a small bug in the error correction routine
Errors now reported to stderr rather than stdout
All command line arguments can now also be passed with two dashes instead of one
Added -version argument to print the program's version
Shape can now be loaded from a pointer to FreeType's FT_Outline
Added hidden CMake options to selectively disable PNG, SVG, or variable font support
Added CMake presets
Other minor bug fixes
Version 1.10 (2023-01-15)
Switched to vcpkg as the primary dependency management system
Switched to libpng as the primary PNG file encoder
Parameters of variable fonts can be specified
Fixed a bug that prevented glyph 0 to be specified in a glyphset
Version 1.9.2 (2021-12-01)
Improved detection of numerical errors in cubic equation solver
Added -windingpreprocess option
Fixed edge coloring not restored if lost during preprocessing
Version 1.9.1 (2021-07-09)
Fixed an edge case bug in the new MSDF error correction algorithm
Version 1.9 (2021-05-28)
Error correction of multi-channel distance fields has been completely reworked
Added new edge coloring strategy that optimizes colors based on distances between edges
Added some minor functions for the library API
Minor code refactor and optimizations
Version 1.8 (2020-10-17)
Integrated the Skia library into the project, which is used to preprocess the shape geometry and eliminate any self-intersections and other irregularities previously unsupported by the software
The scanline pass and overlapping contour mode is made obsolete by this step and has been disabled by default. The preprocess step can be disabled by the new -nopreprocess switch and the former enabled by -scanline and -overlap respectively.
The project can be built without the Skia library, forgoing the geometry preprocessing feature. This is controlled by the macro definition MSDFGEN_USE_SKIA
Significantly improved performance of the core algorithm by reusing results from previously computed pixels
Introduced an additional error correction routine which eliminates MSDF artifacts by analytically predicting results of bilinear interpolation
Added the possibility to load font glyphs by their index rather than a Unicode value (use the prefix g before the character code in -font argument)
Added -distanceshift argument that can be used to adjust the center of the distance range in the output distance field
Fixed several errors in the evaluation of curve distances
Fixed an issue with paths containing convergent corners (those whose inner angle is zero)
The algorithm for pseudo-distance computation slightly changed, fixing certain rare edge cases and improving consistency
Added the ability to supply own FT_Face handle to the msdfgen library
Minor refactor of the core algorithm
Version 1.7.1 (2020-03-09)
Fixed an edge case bug in scanline rasterization
Version 1.7 (2020-03-07)
Added mtsdf mode - a combination of msdf with sdf in the alpha channel
Distance fields can now be stored as uncompressed TIFF image files with floating point precision
Bitmap class refactor - template argument split into data type and number of channels, bitmap reference classes introduced
Added a secondary "ink trap" edge coloring heuristic, can be selected using -coloringstrategy inktrap
Added computation of estimated rendering error for a given SDF
Added computation of bounding box that includes sharp mitered corners
The API for bounds computation of the Shape class changed for clarity
Fixed several edge case bugs
Version 1.6 (2019-04-08)
Core algorithm rewritten to split up advanced edge selection logic into modular template arguments.
Pseudo-distance evaluation reworked to eliminate discontinuities at the midpoint between edges.
MSDF error correction reworked to also fix distances away from edges and consider diagonal pairs. Code simplified.
Added scanline rasterization support for Shape.
Added a scanline pass in the standalone version, which corrects the signs in the distance field according to the selected fill rule (-fillrule). Can be disabled using -noscanline.
Fixed autoframe scaling, which previously caused the output to have unnecessary empty border.
-guessorder switch no longer enabled by default, as the functionality is now provided by the scanline pass.
Updated FreeType and other libraries, changed to static linkage
Added 64-bit and static library builds to the Visual Studio solution
Version 1.5 (2017-07-23)
Fixed rounding error in cubic curve splitting.
SVG parser fixes and support for additional path commands.
Added CMake build script.
Version 1.4 (2017-02-09)
Reworked contour combining logic to support overlapping contours. Original algorithm preserved in functions with _legacy suffix, which are invoked by the new -legacy switch.
Fixed a severe bug in cubic curve distance computation, where a control point lies at the endpoint.
Standalone version now automatically detects if the input has the wrong orientation and adjusts the distance field accordingly. Can be disabled by -keeporder or -reverseorder switch.
SVG parser fixes and improvements.
Version 1.3 (2016-12-07)
Fixed -reverseorder switch.
Fixed glyph loading to use the proper method of acquiring outlines from FreeType.
Version 1.2 (2016-07-20)
Added option to specify that shape vertices are listed in reverse order (-reverseorder).
Added option to set a seed for the edge coloring heuristic (-seed <n>), which can be used to adjust the output.
Fixed parsing of glyph contours that start with a curve control point.
Version 1.1 (2016-05-08)
Switched to MIT license due to popular demand.
Fixed SDF rendering anti-aliasing when the output is smaller than the distance field.
