Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!decwrl!adobe!heaven!glenn From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: Variable characters Message-ID: <296@heaven.woodside.ca.us> Date: 15 Oct 90 17:54:35 GMT References: <1902@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> <21131@well.sf.ca.us> <122961@linus.mitre.org> <293@heaven.woodside.ca.us> Reply-To: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) Organization: RightBrain Software, Woodside, CA Lines: 41 In article aas@boeygen.nr.no (Gisle Aas) writes: >In article <293@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes: > >> For essentially all Roman >> fonts, "stringwidth" returns 0 for the Y component unless your coordinate >> system is rotated or something. > >Can anybody enlighten me on this subject. Why should stringwidth >return something else if your coordinate system is rotated or >something? Sure, I can enlighten you :-) I was being brain-dead when I said that, and I was wrong. It doesn't matter if the coordinate system is rotated. You get 0 unless the font itself has a Y component in the width of the character, which is extremely rare in Roman fonts. In a weak defense of my earlier posting, and to try to convince you that I actually do test things before I post them to the net, I had (approximately) the following dialog with my PostScript interpreter, but failed to notice the negative exponent on the Y component. It's effectively 0, but due to arithmetic error and roundoff, it's not exactly 0: heaven> PS PostScript(r) Version 1006.24 PS>60 rotate PS>/Helvetica-Bold 120 selectfont PS>0 0 moveto (TESTING) stringwidth PS>pstack 6.10352e-05 520.08 PS>quit heaven> Sorry about the misinformation. (Glenn) cvn -- Glenn Reid RightBrain Software glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us PostScript/NeXT developers ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-851-1785