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From: shiva@well.sf.ca.us (Kenneth Porter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: limitcheck in flattenpath
Summary: Confusion
Message-ID: <21743@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 21 Nov 90 15:43:22 GMT
References: <1642@umriscc.isc.umr.edu> <1698@chinacat.Unicom.COM>
Lines: 23



There seems to be some confusion about the desired result of
the char-fitting code. The idea was to, given a box, fit a
character so that it *exactly* fit the box. The box could be as
big as a page.
 
stringwidth won't work here because it gives the change in the
current point. The character origin is not co-incident with the
bounding box origin, and the character width (returned by
stringwidth) is not the same as the right-most edge of the
bounding box, nor is it the same as the width of the bounding
box. A character can bulge outside of its origin, width and
baseline, or may not reach all the way to any of these
dimensions.
 
The only way to know for sure is to use the character bounding
box calculated at the desired size (to compensate for hinting).
 
The font bbox will give an even worse value for this purpose
than stringwidth.
 
Ken (shiva@well.sf.ca.us)