Wellspring/README.md

This is Wellspring, an immediate mode multiple-channel signed distance field font rendering system in C.

About Wellspring
----------------
Wellspring is inspired by the design of Dear ImGui.
It outputs buffer data that you can upload and render anytime in your 3D application.
This means that you can integrate it easily using the graphics library of your choice.

Wellspring uses JSON output from [msdf-atlas-gen](https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdf-atlas-gen) to generate buffers. It also uses [stb_truetype](https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_truetype.h) for additional kerning support. At render time, bind the image data from msdf-atlas-gen with buffers generated by Wellspring for beautiful MSDF font rendering.

Using msdf-atlas-gen
--------------
A full explanation of msdf-atlas-gen is beyond the scope of this project, but note that Wellspring only accepts MSDF atlas types with JSON output.

Your atlas generation might look like this:
```sh
msdf-atlas-gen -yorigin top -font ~/mygame/myfont.otf -imageout ~/mygame/content/forgotten_dream.png -json ~/mygame/content/forgotten_dream.json
```

Dependencies
------------
Wellspring depends on the C runtime, but SDL2 can be optionally depended upon instead if your application prefers it by defining USE_SDL2.

Building Wellspring
-------------------
For *nix platforms, use CMake:

	$ mkdir build/
	$ cd build
	$ cmake ../
	$ make

For Windows, you can use cmake-gui to generate a Visual Studio solution or use VSCode with the CMake and C/C++ Tools extensions.

License
-------
Wellspring is licensed under the zlib license. See LICENSE for details.