Stardraw published several key enhancements to its family of design and documentation software tools, currently comprising Stardraw Audio, Stardraw A/V and Stardraw A/V Lite.
A completely rewritten and optimized text engine bolsters existing functionality with improved text smoothing, definition and performance. This leads to greatly enhanced legibility on screen and in print, as well as considerably faster on-screen rendering. In the most extreme test, a document containing more than 35,000 lines of text exhibited a worst-case screen redraw time on a PIII @ 1.2 GHz of around seven seconds using the old text engine. The new engine reduced this redraw time to less than 0.2 seconds.
In terms of on-screen legibility, the old text engine required a text-display height of at least 11 pixels to render the Arial font legible; however, “jagginess” or “blockiness” at small display heights was sometimes an issue. The new engine requires a height of only seven pixels for smooth text rendering.
For more information about Stardraw, visit www.stardraw.com.
