Writing a Guide to SDF Fonts
This post chronicles the author's extensive, iterative process of developing a high-quality guide for Signed Distance Field (SDF) fonts after realizing their old, incomplete notes were surprisingly high in search results. It details how they grappled with scope creep, technical depth, and presentation style, ultimately focusing on core concepts over implementation specifics to create an accessible resource. The narrative resonates by illustrating the challenges and insights gained from transforming raw technical knowledge into an effective, well-structured guide.
The Lowdown
The author recounts their journey to create a comprehensive guide on Signed Distance Field (SDF) font rendering, a technique initially explored in 2024 for game and map generation projects. Motivated by the unexpected high ranking of their old, incomplete notes for "sdf fonts" in search results, they embarked on a mission to build a page truly worthy of being a top resource, rather than just pointing to library docs or research papers. The process was highly iterative, involving multiple redesigns to refine the scope and presentation.
- The initial attempt involved a broad overview covering various SDF font libraries (msdfgen, stb_truetype, tiny-sdf), but this proved too ambitious given the differing functionalities and the author's limited deep knowledge across all.
- Redesign 2 narrowed the focus exclusively to
msdfgen, detailing tradeoffs like atlas size and antialiasing, complete with custom diagrams and test comparisons. This phase involved extensive testing to recommend specific parameters. - Recognizing the potential for endless testing, the author pivoted to a "how-to" guide in Redesign 3, aiming to show concepts followed by both CPU and GPU JavaScript implementations. However, this version felt too much like a collection of shell commands and code, losing the characteristic "Red Blob Games" feel.
- Redesign 4 involved a complete restart, focusing purely on the core concepts: desired effects, how SDF works, and how to use it to achieve those effects. Implementation details were intentionally moved to a separate, unpolished page to keep the main guide concept-driven.
This detailed account highlights the painstaking effort required to produce clear, effective technical documentation, demonstrating that crafting a valuable resource often means starting over multiple times until the right balance of depth and accessibility is found.