Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!oliveb!sun!eureka!argv
From: argv%eureka@Sun.COM (Dan Heller)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Rotated text
Message-ID: <105466@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 17 May 89 23:58:32 GMT
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: argv@sun (Dan Heller)
Organization: Island Graphics Corporation
Lines: 36

Now that I'm talking about fonts, inspection of the code *appears*
to be just shy of giving XDrawString the ability to render rotated
text.  The following changes would need to happen: there needs to
be a height field in the XCharStruct data structure, and there needs
to be an ability to communicate this new information about the font
changes to the server.  The application is responsible for rotating
the glyphs of the characters, of course.

typedef struct {
    short       lbearing;       /* origin to left edge of raster */
    short       rbearing;       /* origin to right edge of raster */
    short       width;          /* advance to next char's origin */
/+  short	height;		/* advance to next y coord */ +/
    short       ascent;         /* baseline to top edge of raster */
    short       descent;        /* baseline to bottom edge of raster */
    unsigned short attributes;  /* per char flags (not predefined) */
} XCharStruct;

Here, the "width" is currently used to move the position of the
next x coord for rendering the next character.  However, the y
coord stays the same.  I don't see a requirement that this has
to be this way -- with the "height" parameter, the next char's
origin can be moved up or down as well.  If the application
chooses to not rotate the glyphs, the the characters rendered
may have a stepping stone effect.  With negative values in the
height and width fields, the text may be rendered from right
to left.

Affected called would include all the routines which would get 
the geometry of a string including the bounding boxes, text width
and height, etc...

Feedback?

dan <island!argv@sun.com>
    dan  <argv@sun.com>