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From: shiva@well.sf.ca.us (Kenneth Porter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Variable characters
Summary: stringwidth return values
Keywords: font, character size
Message-ID: <21226@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 17 Oct 90 07:50:52 GMT
References: <1902@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> <21131@well.sf.ca.us> <122961@linus.mitre.org>
Lines: 23



marsh@linus.mitre.org (Ralph Marshall) writes:
 
> Of course, you can also get the height of the string from
> stringwidth...
 
This is not true.  stringwidth returns the change in current
point after a show of the specified string.  For Roman
typefaces, only the x component is non-zero.  The y component
is zero because the baseline doesn't change (as it might in a
Japanese font).  Actually, the resulting width is NOT the
bounding box; it must be adjusted by the side bearings of the
first and last characters. This is only a problem, however, if
you need a pretty close fit around the string.
 
If metric info is not available in the font dictionary, you can
use "charpath flattenpath pathbbox", but I think the resulting
bounding box is relative to device coordinates, so you want to
do the pathbbox in a coordinate system that is aligned to
device space (ie. not rotated or skewed).
 
Ken (shiva@well.sf.ca.us)