Text Display and Graphics Control on a Paintable Computer

Consider a display architecture where every pixel has its own dedicated graphics engine. Toward this end, we recast the rendering and graphics control of text for use on a paintable computer. Work on paintable computing is reviewed with a focus on the programming model based on autonomous, mobile code fragments (pfrags) which self-assemble into larger virtual structures. A device simulator is used to demonstrate pfrags interacting to form 2D coordinate scaffolds. Text characters, embodied as pfrag "seeds", use the scaffold to direct their migration and distribute models of the text and associated graphics code to the paint nodes. Affine transformations are demonstrated as an example of finely distributed graphics control.