Proposal

Topic of the session

MapLibre Text Rendering With WebGL

Type of the session

• Collaborate
• Workshop
• Talk

Estimated duration of the session

40 minutes talk plus 20 minutes discussion maybe

Date and Time of the session

Level

• Beginner
• Intermediate
• Advanced

Pre-requisite knowledge

Some understanding of unicode might help.

Not required, but might be useful background reading: https://oliverwipfli.ch/about-text-rendering-in-maplibre-2023-10-17/

Describe the session

This talk will start with what a general purpose text rendering system such as a web browser or word process needs to accomplish to show text on a screen - a task which can be surprisingly complex. Then we will look at how MapLibre GL JS, a TypeScript map rendering engine, handles text rendering with WebGL. In particular, MapLibre's shortcomings shall be highlighted with respect to complex scripts such as Devanagari, Khmer, or Burmese but also we will discuss the limitations of Signed Distance Fields - a text rendering technique which just always results in sausage-like looking letters and icons.

Session facilitator(s), Github handle(s) and timezone(s)

Oliver Wipfli @wipfli CEST

Meeting notes and Virtual Meeting Link

Follow-up / Set-up sessions (if any)

Additional context (optional)

I am happy to travel to London for this event.