I also thank you for sharing! In reading your code to learn from your work, I noticed a little optimization you could use, that applies to other 2d canvas code in general:

CanvasRenderingContext2D has save() and restore() methods you can call to re-use partial paths. So instead of making the path and closing it to fill, then making it again without closing it to stroke, you can make it once without closing, save the graphics state, close the path, then fill, restore the graphics state, then stroke! That is a classic idiom from PostScript (draw, gsave, fill, grestore, stroke).

That should save a bunch of JavaScript looping and spooning points through the 2d context api. (It's the individual lineTo calls that are expensive, because of all the overhead of JavaScript<=>C bindings, not stroking or filling the actual lines. And there's no way to provide an array of points all at once, like with WebGL.

(At least SVG made the right decision, inspired by VML, to put all the points of a path in one attribute string, instead of using individual XML elements for each point.)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/pat...

Once you get into native code, it's fast even if there's a lot to do (i.e. calling ctx.stroke once), but jumping in and out of native code a lot (i.e. calling ctx.lineTo a thousand times) is slow.)

Thanks for sharing the code, it's inspired me! (I'm trying to figure out how to rotate and otherwise generally transform the direction that the lines scan across the depth map and screen, to get a Max Headroom effect! Maybe somebody with deep shader-fu could suggest an out-of-the-box way to render it in hardware with WebGL, to apply to live video!)

Come to think of it, you could just draw the ridges directly as polygons with WebGL, and that would be quite flexible and performant!

I haven't tested it yet, but here's the new drawPolyLine from createHeightMapRenderer.js:

Original:

https://github.com/anvaka/peak-map/blob/master/src/lib/creat...

Optimized:

/**
* Draws filled polyline.
*/
function drawPolyLine(points) {
if (points.length < 3) return;

let smoothRange = getSmoothRange(points, smoothSteps);
points = smoothRange.points;

// Create the unclosed path.
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.moveTo(points[0], points[1]);
for (let i = 2; i < points.length; i += 2) {
ctx.lineTo(points[i], points[i + 1]);
}

// If line's height is greater than 2 pixels, let's save
// the graphics state, finish and close the path, fill it,
// then restore the graphics state:
if (smoothRange.max - smoothRange.min > 2) {
ctx.save();
ctx.lineTo(points[points.length - 2], smoothRange.max);
ctx.lineTo(points[0], smoothRange.max);
ctx.closePath();
ctx.fillStyle = lineFill;
ctx.fill();
ctx.restore();
}

// Now finally stroke the unclosed path.
ctx.strokeStyle = lineStroke;
ctx.stroke();
}

There was a classic "Grandfather Clock" posting from Glenn Reid at Adobe (author of the "Green Book" on PostScript language program design) to comp.lang.postscript that really opened my eyes about writing code in interpreted languages like PostScript (and JavaScript, while JIT'ed at runtime, still makes calling native code expensive), and balancing optimization with readability:

Here's Glenn's "Green Book", which was like a bible to me, and still is quite relevant to canvas 2d context programming -- see especially page 9, section 1.5, Program Design Guidelines, page 72, section 4.6, Optimizing Translator Output, and page 99, chapter 7, The Mechanics of Setting Text:

https://www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/GREENBK.PDF

>page 9: 1.5 Program Design Guidelines

>There are a few items that may be kept in mind while implementing a driver for a PostScript device. As with most software
development, the most difficult part of writing programs in the
PostScript language is the design of the program. If the design is
good, implementing it is easy. If the design is poor, it may not
even be possible to correctly implement it. Below are some
helpful items to keep in mind when writing your software. All of
them are explained more fully within the text of this book; this
is only an attempt to prime the pump before you start reading:

>• Use the operand stack efficiently. Pay particular attention to the order of the elements on the stack and how
they are used.

(Using the stack efficiently by designing fluent words that chain and dovetail together elegantly in pipelines (and systematically writing line-by-line stack comments) instead of using named variables in dictionaries is good idiomatic PostScript and Forth, aka tacit programming or point-free style, the stack-based equivalent of fluent interfaces.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_programming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface

>• Avoid unnecessary redundancy. When a program is produced, check for many repetitive steps that perhaps
could be condensed. Keep identifiers short if they are
to be transmitted many times.

(Only create paths once!)

>• Use the PostScript imaging model effectively. When
printing, a document must be translated into the language of the printer. This includes a philosophical
adjustment to the nature of the PostScript imaging
model.

(Use the graphics state stack!)

>• It is better to translate into the PostScript imaging model than to maintain another set of graphics primitives
using the PostScript language for emulation.

(The hardest problem I ever tried (and failed) to solve properly with PostScript was making a printer driver for rendering user interfaces drawn with X11 using a combination of bitmaps and lines. Because of X11 "half open" pixel rounding rules versus PostScript's "stencil paint" model, they just don't line up right when you zoom into them, and there's no fudge or compromise that works in all cases. Here is my commented-out failed attempt:)

https://github.com/mmontone/garnet/blob/1652af38f76b1c4efb19...

line-color line-cap line-join dash-pattern
thickness
% dup -1 ne { .5 add } if % fudge outline width thicker
StrokeShape

Half Open:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978008050...

Stencil Paint:

http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/...

>page 100: Note:
There is one principle to keep in mind when deciding
upon an algorithm for setting text. The longer the
string presented to one of the show operators, the
more efficient the system is likely to be. This is because
the PostScript language built-in operators, such as show,
widthshow, and ashow, operate essentially at compiled speed once they have been invoked. Each moveto
or div operation performed must first be interpreted,
which is significantly slower.

Glenn's post in a comp.lang.postscript discussion about PostScript programming style and optimization:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/%22glenn$20reid%22$...

From: Glenn Reid (Abode Systems)
Newsgroup: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: An Idea to Help Make Postscript Easier to Read (and Write)
Date: 10 Sep 88 17:26:24 GMT

You people tend to forget that the PostScript language is interpreted.
It is well and good to use tools to convert to and from PostScript,
but it is not quite as "transparent" as we all might think.
I like to think of a big grandfather clock, with the pendulum swinging.
Each time pendulum swings, the PostScript interpreter gets to do one
operation. The "granularity" of the clock is nowhere near the speed
of a microprocessor instruction set, and any comparison with assembly
languages doesn't make sense.

The difference between:

0 0 moveto

and

0 0 /arg2 exch def /arg1 exch def arg1 arg2 moveto

can sort of be measured in "ticks" of the interpreter's clock. It's
not quite this simple, since simply pushing a literal is faster than
executing a real PostScript operator, but it is a rough rule of thumb.
It will take about three times as long to execute the second of these
in a tight loop, and about five times as long if it is transmitted and
scanned each time. My rule of thumb is that if you have roughly the
same number of tokens in your stack approach as you do with your 'exch
def' approach, the 'exch def' is likely to be much more readable and
better. Otherwise, I usually go with the stack approach.

One other thing of note is that if you have too much stack manipulation
going on, it may well be symptomatic of a problem in the original program
design.

Also, most procedures don't do any stack manipulation at all, they
simply use their arguments directly from the stack. In this situation,
it is especially wasteful (and confusing, I think) to declare
intermediate variables.

Compare:

% sample procedure call:
(Text) 100 100 12 /Times-Roman SETTEXT

% approach 1:
/SETTEXT { %def
findfont exch scalefont setfont moveto show
} def

% approach 2:
/SETTEXT { %def
/arg5 exch def
/arg4 exch def
/arg3 exch def
/arg2 exch def
/arg1 exch def
arg5 findfont arg4 scalefont setfont
arg2 arg3 moveto arg1 show
} def

Which of these is easier for you to understand?

Anyway, I think the discussion is a good one, but let's not forget
that PostScript it is an interpreted language. And I don't think
it is terribly hard to use and understand, if it is written well.

Glenn Reid
Adobe Systems