Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!isis!ico!rcd From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript Subject: Re: Variable characters Summary: font rotated Message-ID: <1990Oct15.221536.9638@ico.isc.com> Date: 15 Oct 90 22:15:36 GMT References: <1902@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> <21131@well.sf.ca.us> Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO Lines: 23 aas@boeygen.nr.no (Gisle Aas) writes: > 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? Glenn didn't really mean the coordinate system (he knows better than that:-) but rather the font transformation matrix. Rotation the page coord- inates doesn't affect anything, because stringwidth gives its result in page coordinates. However, if you start with a typical Roman font and transform it with "makefont", using a font transformation matrix [a b c d e f] where b is nonzero, you'll get a nonzero y component from stringwidth. (Note also that altering f *doesn't* give a nonzero y--although it displaces the text in the y direction, it does so by a constant amount for the whole string, so that the y "escapement" is still zero.) -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Never offend with style when you can offend with substance.