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Pomax.github.io
Personal blog · pomax.github.io · on HN as TheRealPomaxmathprogramming
Pomax.github.io is a personal blog at pomax.github.io about math and programming. Since 2013, 71 different Hacker News readers have linked it 117 times, most often “A Primer on Bézier Curves (2013)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- A Primer on Bézier Curves (2013)34 people · 39 mentions · first linked 2015-03-02
- A Primer on Bézier Curves (2013)8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2013-05-01
- An introduction to Japanese4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-08-14
- Flying planes in Microsoft Flight Simulator with a JavaScript autopilot (2023)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-02-09
- A bit of font generation: a brief excursion into OpenType3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-07-16
- /bezierinfo/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-03-05
- /bezierinfo/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-12-06
- Localization is hard (updating a not even particularly complex codebase)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-03-10
- A Primer on Bézier Curves2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-28
- Bezier.js, for doing bezier curve things2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-10-05
What Hacker News says?
"A primer on Bezier curves", https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo It started as a small explanation on the basics of Bezier curves in 2011 and then kept growing until it's basically a full book now, hitting hacker news every year/half year, and getting lots of thanks for having made it by a very diverse crowd - from kids doing homework to engineers at software companies who have a question not covered by the material…
Comment linking /bezierinfo
on “Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?”Submitted A Primer on Bézier Curves as a story · 398 points
HN discussionYou can use cubic Bézier curves to approximate a circular arc: https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#circles_cubic . In many cases that's even how circular arcs are rendered, even when they are represented with a different data structure. You'll often see the the constant 0.5522... which is for quarter circles. E.g. both WPF and Java's Swing render arcs with that approximation, perhaps others, but those where the plac…
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on “It's always been you, Canvas2D”Submitted An introduction to Japanese as a story · 363 points
HN discussionFonts are not "collections of pictures", though, and haven't been since the mid 1980. Details in http://pomax.github.io/1449777175633/opentype-let-s-learn-ho... but the gist is that a font is a full, complex, 700-page-specced typesetting program that has to be run on a render engine, similar to how a game ROM is run on an emulator or hardware setup. Sure, you need the engine, but there is nothing to generalize: that…
Comment linking /1449777175633/opentype-let-s-learn-how-modern-fonts-actually-work
on “Inside font-rs, a font renderer written in Rust”Submitted Flying planes in Microsoft Flight Simulator with a JavaScript autopilot (2023) as a story · 284 points
HN discussionVery cool stuff, text rendering is a really hairy problem. I also got nerd sniped by Sebastian Lague's recent video on text rendering [0] (also linked to in the article) and started writing my own GPU glyph rasterizer. In the video, Lague makes a key observation: most curves in fonts (at least for Latin alphabet) are monotonic . Monotonic Bezier curves are contained within the bounding box of its end points (applies…
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on “Rendering Crispy Text on the GPU”Submitted A Primer on Bézier Curves (2013) as a story · 243 points
HN discussionPomax (the author) here: for those wondering about what's different since last time this hit HN, this is a slowly-but-surely updating project that has been in the works since 2011. If you remember seeing it before: you're not wrong! But it will probably have been less content or less functionality than it is this time round =) The latest improvement is that the codebase now supports localization which means that if…
Comment linking /1489108158510/localization-is-hard
on “A Primer on Bézier Curves”Submitted A Primer on Bézier Curves as a story · 197 points
HN discussionYes, old school web! A few of the others I like: https://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/tcenters/ ; http://paulbourke.net/ ; https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ ; https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ ; https://www.wood-database.com/ ; http://www.oftenpaper.net/sierpinski.htm ; https://www.animatedknots.com/ . There are lots more out there but social media favors new content rather than timeless content. I want to see more…
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on “Hexagonal Grids (2013)”Submitted A Primer on Bézier Curves (2011) as a story · 190 points
HN discussionIt does talk about that: https://pomax.github.io/nrGrammar/#section-1-1-3-1-Not_prono...
Comment linking /nrGrammar/
on “An introduction to Japanese”Submitted A Primer on Bézier Curves – B-Splines as a story · 167 points
HN discussionYou're welcome! Hopefully someone can make recommendations for books (or other references) which address the next two aspects of math I'll need, conic sections and Bézier curves/surfaces. I have found: - _Practical Conic Sections_ by J.W. Downs - https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwxzDHniEw and I'm reading through _METAFONT: The Program_ but if someone could provide a list of mat…
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on ““A Course of Pure Mathematics” – G. H. Hardy (1921) [pdf]”Submitted Implementing strict three-point perspective as a story · 133 points
HN discussionThat's hilarious, I was working on https://pomax.github.io/music-theory-js/public/ over the weekend (working on adding a chord arranger to complement the cell arranger, so you can write a C3-root I–V–vi–IV as literally a "C3 I" cell with some duration, followed by just dropping in V, vi, and IV cells with some duration.
Comment linking /music-theory-js/public/
on “Show HN: Hacklily – sheet music editor”Submitted A Primer on Bézier Curves (2013) as a story · 114 points
HN discussionHonest answer: that's a bit like asking "why buy games when there are so many free games available?" Modern fonts are vastly more elaborate pieces of software than what people tend to think they are [1], and you get what you pay for. If you just need 56 letters, get a free font. If you need full Unicode Latin support, with proper kerning between each of the thousands of possible pairs, with ligature substitution for…
Comment linking /CFF-glyphlet-fonts/
on “Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-hated typeface”Submitted Digital colours and digital photography as a story · 92 points
HN discussionIf you're looking for more in-depth information on Bezier curves, I've found this document invaluable on more than one occasion, both for math and implementation suggestions: https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on “Drawing better-looking Bézier curves”Submitted Computing normals for 3D Bézier curves as a story · 74 points
HN discussionFor more tasty Bézier fun: https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on “Drawing better-looking Bézier curves”Submitted A bit of font generation: a brief excursion into OpenType as a story · 41 points
HN discussion>I just added a weirdly missing short section on plain rational beziers That's great! Thanks for writing and maintaining this document over the years! Coincidentally, I was referencing the section on offsetting [0] just last week and read the following, >There is a small class of polynomials where the square root is also a polynomial, but they're utterly useless to us: any polynomial with unweighted binomial coeffic…
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on “A Primer on Bézier Curves (2013)”Submitted Creating a MIDI pass-through recorder as a story · 13 points
HN discussionthis might be the most amazing book ever and I might even buy it and I know I'll get down votes because so many of you love books but.... part of me feels like , especially for a topic like this, I want webpages with interactive diagrams. Not last century's info dissemination tech but this century's info dissemination tech I feel page like this https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/ is far better online than any paper…
Comment linking /bezierinfo/
on “No bullshit guide to linear algebra – v2”Submitted I built a spice rack to fit our 72 mason jars of spices and herbs as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI have bugs for this on webkit outside for... 4 years and counting. To the point I got so frustrated I wrote my own rant on gamuts and color spaces over on https://pomax.github.io/1436836360570/we-are-really-terrible... - seeing someone finally acknowledge this on the actual webkit blog is heartening. Maybe things _can_ change.
Comment linking /1436836360570/we-are-really-terrible-at-digital-colours-and-digital-photography
on “Improving Color on the Web”Submitted An Introduction to Japanese as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
