Weird rendering of text outline in AWT

[Petr Vasicek]

I've followed a tutorial on creating a text with border here: http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/Media/2DText/style.html, using java.awt.Graphics2D.

It works, but only for thin outlines. If i make the outline thicker, the sharp points in the text (in letters like A, M or W) get overly "stretched". Please see the attached picture, it's hard to describe this effect.

As a workaround, I tried to use transformations and the fill() command to "draw a rectangle" with the text in a for-cycle in black and then fill() the text in white in the middle of it. This approach works great, but is really very slow and I would need to resize the text dynamically in my program

This is the code I'm using with the original method I found in the tutorial:

    public void draw(Graphics2D logo, int size) {
        if (text.length() > 0) {
            int style = Font.PLAIN;

            int fontSize = MyLogo.calculateWidth(widthRatio, size);
            Font font = new Font(fontName, style, fontSize);
            logo.setFont(font);
            logo.setStroke(new BasicStroke(fontSize * ((float) borderRatio / 100)));

            TextLayout textLayout = new TextLayout(text, font, logo.getFontRenderContext());

            float width = (float) logo.getFontMetrics().stringWidth(text);
            float height = (float) textLayout.getBounds().getHeight();

            AffineTransform transform = new AffineTransform();
            transform.setToTranslation(size / 2 - width / 2, size / 2 + (height / 2));

            Shape shape = textLayout.getOutline(transform);

            logo.setColor(border);
            logo.draw(shape); // outline
            logo.setColor(color);
            logo.fill(shape); // text itself
        }
    }

This is a method in my Text class, so there are variables like color, borderRatio which are available. It seems to me that this is a bug in text outlining which happens with very sharp points in the text. Is there any way around it, some settings that can resolve this issue? Or any workaround (except the one I mentioned)?

Many thanks!

[Darryl Burke]

You could try some of the RenderingHints, particularly the ones for anti-aliasing and render quality. Or you could use the approach at Java World -- Jazz up the standard Java fonts. Or thee's a code sample rather like yours on java2s.com.

[Petr Vasicek]

Thanks Darryl for your reply, it made me try the example from java2s and when I was adding setStroke command I realized that the constructor of BasicStroke can have more parameters, played with it a bit and resolved the issue:

logo.setStroke(new BasicStroke(width, BasicStroke.CAP_ROUND, BasicStroke.JOIN_ROUND));

Basically anything apart from BasicStroke.JOIN_MITER as the third parameter will do.

[Darryl Burke]

Petr Vasicek wrote:Thanks Darryl for your reply, it made me try the example from java2s and when I was adding setStroke command I realized that the constructor of BasicStroke can have more parameters, played with it a bit and resolved the issue:

You're welcome, and well done!