I’m tasked with building an app that would recreate an image using words and type alone.
For a very rough example of what the end result might be
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/manhattan-new-york-typographic-map-michael-tompsett.html
My first question is
Could such an application be entirely built in the front end using Canvas?
If so, which canvas library would work best, Kinetic.js or Easel.js?
Are there any CC javascript libraries that might help with some of the functionality?
If not Canvas, what other possible front end solutions might work? (no flash, silverlight, etc
Yes this is very possible in Canvas. If you don’t want to use a plugin, canvas is a good bet, but SVG is a good bet too, since there’s no performance issues involved and SVG already has some built in event handlers to help you.
I wouldn’t bother using Kinetic or Easel unless you are very comfortable using them for your project. If you don’t know which one is better, you are not comfortable enough with them to either for the project. Learn more about them first, but I’d encourage instead going solo if you plan on a future of canvas development and this isn’t just a one-off canvas project.
SVG has similar libraries, such as Raphael.
Making a canvas or SVG app that renders text that you can then resize, rotate, and move is not particularly hard. Giving a bunch of words and a shape and having it done automatically, however, would be something else entirely and isn’t really a canvas problem, its more of just a general topological program that would be the same on any platform, and non-trivial to implement.