🚀 go-pugleaf

aas@boeygen.nr.no (Gisle Aas) writes:
> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes:

> >                                               For essentially all Roman
> >  fonts, "stringwidth" returns 0 for the Y component unless your coordinate
> >  system is rotated or something.

> Can anybody enlighten me on this subject. Why should stringwidth
> return something else if your coordinate system is rotated or
> something?

Glenn didn't really mean the coordinate system (he knows better than
that:-) but rather the font transformation matrix.  Rotation the page coord-
inates doesn't affect anything, because stringwidth gives its result in page
coordinates.  However, if you start with a typical Roman font and transform
it with "makefont", using a font transformation matrix [a b c d e f] where
b is nonzero, you'll get a nonzero y component from stringwidth.  (Note
also that altering f *doesn't* give a nonzero y--although it displaces the
text in the y direction, it does so by a constant amount for the whole
string, so that the y "escapement" is still zero.)
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Never offend with style when you can offend with substance.