Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!adobe!heaven!glenn
From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Variable characters
Keywords: font, character size
Message-ID: <293@heaven.woodside.ca.us>
Date: 11 Oct 90 19:34:38 GMT
References: <1902@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> <21131@well.sf.ca.us> <122961@linus.mitre.org>
Reply-To: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Organization: RightBrain Software, Woodside, CA
Lines: 20

In article <122961@linus.mitre.org> marsh@darwin.UUCP (Ralph Marshall 617 271-8784) writes:
>Of course, you can also get the height of the string from stringwidth
>(despite the somewhat misleading name).  It leaves both the width and
>height of the string on the stack, taking into account ....

No.  The "stringwidth" operator returns the amount by which the current
point will be displaced.  It has nothing to do with the toner marks
made on the page and how big they might be.  For essentially all Roman
fonts, "stringwidth" returns 0 for the Y component unless your coordinate
system is rotated or something.

You need to use "false charpath pathbbox" to get the actual visual width
and height of the characters.

/Glenn

-- 
 Glenn Reid				RightBrain Software
 glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us		PostScript/NeXT developers
 ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn		415-851-1785