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From: mouse@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.EDU (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  Font draw direction
Message-ID: <9103281429.AA18278@lightning.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 28 Mar 91 14:29:58 GMT
Sender: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 29

> What is the perpose of draw direction field in the font structure ?

Quoting from the Xlib manual,

	The members of the XFontStruct have the following semantics:
	
	o    The direction member can be either FontLeftToRight or
	     FontRightToLeft.  It is just a hint as to whether most
	     XCharStruct elements have a positive (FontLeftToRight) or
	     a negative (FontRightToLeft) character width metric.  The
	     core protocol defines no support for vertical text.

> How do you create a font with a draw direction RightToLeft ?

I don't know, offhand; presumably something in the BDF file turns into
the direction hint by the time it gets into the server.

> If a font have a draw direction RightToLeft, is DrawString going to
> the the string from right to left ?

Probably, but not because of the direction value; rather, XDrawString
will simply add the character widths, which for a right-to-left font
will normally mean that each glyph is drawn to the left of the previous
one, because most widths will be negative.

					der Mouse

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