SKILL.md
Slug Font Rendering Algorithm
Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.
Slug is a reference implementation of the Slug font rendering algorithm — a GPU-accelerated technique for rendering vector fonts and glyphs at arbitrary scales with high quality anti-aliasing. It works by encoding glyph outlines as lists of quadratic Bézier curves and line segments, then resolving coverage directly in fragment shaders without pre-rasterized textures.
Paper: JCGT 2017 — Slug Algorithm
Blog (updates): A Decade of Slug
License: MIT — Patent dedicated to public domain. Credit required if distributed.
What Slug Does
- Renders TrueType/OpenType glyphs entirely on the GPU
- No texture atlases or pre-rasterization needed
- Scales to any resolution without quality loss
- Anti-aliased coverage computed per-fragment using Bézier math
- Works with any rendering API that supports programmable shaders (D3D11/12, Vulkan, Metal via translation)
Slug Font Rendering Algorithm
Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.
Slug is a reference implementation of the Slug font rendering algorithm — a GPU-accelerated technique for rendering vector fonts and glyphs at arbitrary scales with high quality anti-aliasing. It works by encoding glyph outlines as lists of quadratic Bézier curves and line segments, then resolving coverage directly in fragment shaders without pre-rasterized textures.
Paper: JCGT 2017 — Slug Algorithm
Blog (updates): A Decade of Slug
License: MIT — Patent dedicated to public domain. Credit required if distributed.
What Slug Does
- Renders TrueType/OpenType glyphs entirely on the GPU
- No texture atlases or pre-rasterization needed
- Scales to any resolution without quality loss
- Anti-aliased coverage computed per-fragment using Bézier math
- Works with any rendering API that supports programmable shaders (D3D11/12, Vulkan, Metal via translation)