Java™ Media APIs: Cross-Platform Imaging, Media, and Visualization
by Alejandro Terrazas, John Ostuni, Michael Barlow
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One of the keys to understanding Java 2D text rendering is to realize that in most ways text can be treated as a shape. As such, most of the methods used on shape primitives can be used on text primitives. However, some special properties of graphics-based text should be considered.
Before diving into these special properties, it is necessary to consider some terminology. The different terms used to describe text, layout, and style largely reflect the different ways primitives are grouped to lay out text.
The overall goal of text layout is to artistically represent symbols (known as characters) that have meaning in a particular language. Each character is represented by a set of shape primitives called glyphs. Technically, glyphs are made ...