The disclosure provides methods of encoding a path, a stroking system for paths, a renderer that generates a stroked tessellation of a path, and a method of determining a type of link of a path from a data structure. The data structure can be an array of indexed links that compactly encode a path. The position of one or more index values, such as a null index value, within an indexed link can encode the link's type. In one example, a method of encoding includes: (1) receiving a path having multiple links, wherein the links include at least one segment and at least one junction, and (2) generating an encoded path by encoding the links based on positional information of the links, wherein the encoding employs a same data structure for each of the links.