🚀 go-pugleaf

pererik@cmi.no (Per-Erik Nordbo) writes:
>rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
>|> pererik@cmi.no (Per-Erik Nordbo) writes:
>|> >I would like to fill the bounding box of a string before I 'show' ...
...[stringwidth doesn't give the right info]...
>|> What you want is a bounding box for the string, which you can get using the
>|> charpath and pathbbox operators.
...
>The pathbbox operator has some drawbacks, however...
...
>"If the user coordinate system is rotated (other than by multiples of 90 degrees) or skewed, 'pathbbox' may return a bounding box that is larger than expected."

Yes, because pathbbox's bounding box is calculated in device space and
transformed back into user space.  One way around this is to get the
bounding box while the axes are aligned and hang on to it--for example,
with aligned axes, put yourself at the origin and get the bounding box,
then delta-transform it.  Move and rotate to where you want to be, then
inverse-delta-transform it to get the box you want.

This is sounding heavy-handed.  (I'm waiting for somebody like Henry or
Glenn to step in with a simple, obvious solution and make me feel like a
dolt.:-)

If you'd rather do the computation upstream of the printer, use .afm
files, since those have the bounding boxes.  It's more work for you, since
you've got to write a small gob of code to get the afm data and walk down
the string building the bounding box.  But it ends up being a lot less
computation than the charpath ritual.
-- 
Dick Dunn    rcd@raven.eklektix.com   -or-   raven!rcd    Boulder, Colorado
   Clowns are necessities, not luxuries.