[GRASS5] R_line_width()

[Glynn Clements]

Huidae Cho wrote:

> You're right. The first version was drawing two vertical lines at a
> time. But the horizontal width of line (point) was not correct
> (linewidth"+1").  Well, who cares about this extra one pixel, but it was
> little fat horizontally. If I add one more vertical pixel to avoid this
> problem, a line looked even fatter in both x-y direction.
> 
> With the PNG driver, if line width is not that big, it seems working at
> reasonable speed. However, if you have a good idea, please let me know.

The simplest way is to draw parallelograms. If the line is close to
vertical (i.e. |dy|>|dx|) call the original draw_line() linewidth
times, each with different X offset. If it's closer to horizontal, use
a Y offset instead.

E.g.:

int draw_thick_line(int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2)
{
	int k = linewidth/2;
	int i;

	for (i = 0; i < linewidth; i++)
		if (abs(y2-y1) > abs(x2-x1))
			draw_line(x1-k+i, y1, x2-k+i, y2);
		else
			draw_line(x1, y1-k+i, x2, y2-k+i);

	return 0;
}

This will be adequate except when drawing particularly thick lines
with a significant slope (i.e. neither horizontal nor vertical), where
the caps will be noticably wrong. For lines a few pixels thick, it's
unlikely to matter.

A more accurate (but more complex) solution is to use both X and Y
offsets generated by computing the perpendicular line. The problem
here is that you have to initialise the remainder correctly so that
the "steps" align (otherwise you get "holes").

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>