Paper.js is an open source vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of the HTML5 Canvas. It offers a clean Scene Graph / Document Object Model and a lot of powerful functionality to create and work with vector graphics and bezier curves, all neatly wrapped up in a well designed, consistent and clean programming interface.

A JavaScript library that aims to make in-browser drawing very, very easy.

This page demonstrates usage of the vector fonts with Canvas HTML tag. These fonts provide standard Java-like API functions for measuring font metrics including getAscent, getDescent, getLeading and stringWidth and can be used to display any unicode characters. Currently only a small subset of fonts is available and not all unicode characters are supported by all fonts. The library does not currently support all CSS font attributes - only font family, size, bold and italic attributes can be specified.

The <canvas> element provides the browser's javascript with a two dimensional drawing area. It is a simple path/stroke-fill model but provides the primitives necessary for making sophisticated graphical presentations. And you will need to be sophisticated with your grpahical presentation because you won't be using any printed words or numbers. What could have been the holy grail of javascript to user communication was turned into a mime by the omission of text.

Fortunately the 1960s has come to the rescue. A. V. Hershey created a set of simple vector fonts for pen plotters which were released by the US National Institute of Standards (NIST). The code presented here encodes the printable 7-bit ASCII characters in a javascript file with a handful of functions to add text operations to the canvas element.