Thoughts, tutorials, and updates about pathogen-lang
Two new PathBlock methods — variableOffset and compoundVariableOffset — turn any path into a rail for expressive, variable-width strokes. We build up from the rail model to curvature-continuous joins, filled ribbons with end caps, and a glyph-wrapped Pathogen wordmark.
Five more custom filters that close the gaps native CSS leaves open: outer/inner glow, embossed surfaces, Material-style elevation shadows, inset shadows, and pixelation — all configured by named parameters, all composable via GroupLayer.
Pathogen's custom filters are first-class language values — defined once, reused, introspected, and composed in ways native CSS filter functions can't match. A walkthrough of the pipeline, anchored by NoiseFilter.
Build Clifford attractor visualizations from scratch — iterative chaos math, efficient point rendering, color mapping strategies, and where the language hits its limits.
From Lezer migration to a full IDE experience — how we built a VS Code extension with live preview, intelligent completions, refactoring, and 16 language server features for the Pathogen SVG language.
Build a radial bar chart from scratch — annular sector geometry, data-driven loops, rotated labels, and new stdlib functions for polar data visualization.
Three stdlib functions that generate complete grid geometries — squares, equilateral triangles, and hexagons — with four visual pattern types each.
Two stdlib functions that set and rotate the pen's direction without emitting path commands — enabling tangentLine and tangentArc immediately after M, and clean z closure in PathBlocks.
Three stdlib functions that turn waypoints into G1-continuous Bézier curves — cubicSpline for explicit tangent control, quadSpline for implicit angles, and clippedQuadSpline for eccentricity dampening.
Turn font glyphs into PathBlock geometry — manual text layout, contour decomposition, per-character transforms, and boolean text cutouts.
Compose, measure, and position text before drawing — collision-free label placement for parametric SVG diagrams.
A UX bug became a language feature — bare hex codes, CSS color functions, and the percent suffix are now first-class expressions in Pathogen.
How PathBlocks support curve-preserving boolean operations — combine closed shapes using set operations without linearizing curves.
Chamfer, fillet, and elliptical fillet operations on PathBlocks — cut corners with straight lines, round them with circular arcs, or shape them with ellipses.
How to query points, tangents, and normals along any path — and use partition() to distribute elements evenly along curves.
How PathBlocks turn SVG path fragments into composable, reusable building blocks — define once, draw anywhere, transform freely.
How Pathogen's gradient system flows from .pathogen source through the compiler, GPU renderer, and blog build pipeline to produce the interactive demos in this series.
What if gradient color stops were not positions on a line, but closed paths? TopoGradient uses signed distance fields and Laplace solvers to create terrain-like gradients from arbitrary contour shapes.
SVG2 proposed mesh gradients, then abandoned them. Pathogen implements both grid-based mesh gradients and scatter-based freeform gradients with GPU-accelerated rendering.
SVG has no conic gradient primitive. Pathogen adds one with partial sweeps, inner radius, direction control, and a WebGPU rendering pipeline that falls back gracefully to Canvas 2D.
How Pathogen turns SVG's linearGradient and radialGradient into programmable, composable building blocks with OKLCH interpolation, spread methods, and gradient inheritance.
How Pathogen's Color system turns SVG into a reactive medium — from OKLCH color manipulation to CSS-variable-driven theming that updates at runtime.
After solving SPA routing on CloudFlare Pages, we needed to add server-rendered and static pages alongside the SPA. New platform, new surprises — 308 redirects, stale workers, build pipeline ordering, and the art of making static and dynamic content coexist.
How programmatically created SVG elements silently produce broken output when serialized with XMLSerializer and loaded as images — and the surprisingly simple fix.
A developer's journey through documentation gaps when trying to make SPA routing work on CloudFlare Pages with subdirectory deployments.