Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!shelby!neon!kaufman
From: kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Text Spacing on Laser & Fractional Font Sizes?
Message-ID: <1990Oct29.031924.29740@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 29 Oct 90 03:19:24 GMT
References: <1990Oct28.235805.2481@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 23

In article <1990Oct28.235805.2481@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au> a_dent@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au writes:

>The books/Technotes say that the Laserwriter takes the text endpoints set by
>Quickdraw and justifies the text between those points.  As far as I can see, 
>the only way to set these "Endpoints" is to draw the text in Quickdraw as
>accurately as possible - ie: using fractional widths and SpaceExtra.  Am I
>missing something here?

That is correct.  The LW driver will do a MeasureText using your settings
for FractEnable and SpaceExtra (and CharExtra), and use the results as the
endpoints for the line.  Actual spacing, character-to-character, will be
different on the Laserwriter.

>Secondly, how do you specify fractional font sizes?  The text I am trying to
>emulate looks like about a 5.9 point Helvetica.

Use the StdText procedure to draw the text.  You can specify fine scaling via
the numer and denom parameters.  Try, e.g. 59/100, with 10 point type.
Note that this will change the measured width, (above), and you will have
to compensate for that.  Within a TextBegin-TextEnd comment, ALL calls to
StdText must have the SAME numer/denom, or you will get funny results.

Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)