Update on the Slug algorithm Open Source implementation: I absorbed GLyphy into a new HarfBuzz module called hb-gpu.

Check out the web demo. Interact with it with the mouse. Or press space to animation rotation:

https://behdad.org/hb-gpu-demo

Discuss hb-gpu at:

https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/pull/5878

HarfBuzz GPU Demo

@behdad Thanks for that amazing demo. Text looks very nice on my phone. But on my computer screen which has 1x pixel density small text looks a little not so good. Are there any tricks to improve rendering on lower density screens?
@wipfli Hey. Thanks. This technique, like most GPU-accelerated text rasterizers, render "linearly-scalable" text, which means you don't do any hinting of the glyph shapes for the size they are displayed in, which means blurry and imperfect text at small sizes. For UI small-size text, still you need something like FreeType which does hinting, but then you can't freely scale and rotate the text on the fly. The linear algorithms are useful for games, virtual reality, etc, where fast, arbitrary transformations, are required.
@wipfli Also, check the demo again, I changed the font. A lot easier to appreciate the rendering on serif fonts than sans-serif.
@wipfli I implemented some poor man's stem-darkening as well, improves appearance at small sizes. Check it out. You can toggle it with "s".
@behdad thank you! That is a big improvement on my screen.