From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 26 2007 - 15:25:00 CDT

Hi,

On Sat, Jun 23, 2007 at 09:31:40AM -0500, Jay Shore wrote:
> Maybe I do not understand all of the issues. But, Pov-ray and megapov both
> support text. Megapov¹s support is more extensive.
> Why not just use their capabilities instead of drawing your own letters?
> I apologize if I am completely missing something.

The main reason is to have consistency from one renderer to the next...
I think once we get a consistent implementation working, we could go back
and have some renderer-specific customizations for people, but its preferable
to have something that looks basically the same everywhere as a first step.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

> > I read your conversation, and although I am not that familiar with image
> > processing, I was wondering if in a image renderer (like POV-Ray) wouldn't be
> > possible to implement text like the one we see on digital displays (watches
> > for eg). It could be implemented using small cylinders which intersect. That
> > way I think we needn't worry about ends that don't match up perfectly in the
> > file text format.
> > Personally I don't need state of the art fonts, and this would be a sufficient
> > solution for people who need lots of labels in lots of files (unfesable with
> > further image processing tools).
> >
> > Petrica
> >
> > On 6/22/07, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 03:26:00PM -0400, Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
> >>> > don't know, whether i mentioned that before, but can you comment about
> >>> > how feasable it would be to have a mechanism to load external graphics
> >>> > on top of, e.g., a rectangle? i remember we were discussing leopard
> >>> > skin patterned VDW reps at some time...
> >>
> >> Bill-boarded fonts would work for renderers that can do both texturing
> >> and also have a provision for handling an alpha channel to modulate the
> >> texture, but this is as frought with difficulty as doing it by simulating
> >> lines, since each renderer has differences there. I'll likely have more
> >> to say about that after I have the volumetric textures working in
> >> Tachyon and POV-Ray.
> >>
> >>> > the reason for this would be, that the typical 'wire style labels' are
> >>> > not always very readable, and writing a label externally (e.g. with
> >>> > GIMP) can produce more readable text and a proper background so the text
> >>> > stands out, i can see plenty of ways to use something like this, up
> >>> > the the point of changing the text/graphics in each frame.
> >>
> >> Yes, I agree.
> >>
> >> John
> >>
> >> --
> >> NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> >> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> >> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> >> Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> >> WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078
> >>
> >
>
>
> --
>
> Jay Shore
> Associate Professor
> Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
> South Dakota State University
> Brookings SD, 57007
> phone: (605) 688-6356
> fax: (605) 688-6364
>
>

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078