Re: width in ASCII text.

Chris Marrin ([email protected])
Wed, 29 Nov 1995 17:21:12 -0800

On Nov 29, 12:41pm, Jan Hardenbergh wrote:
> Subject: width in ASCII text.
>
> ...
>
> The VAG discussed this in the context of the 1.1 switch to UTF-8, etc.
>
> What we decided is that the width field should scale the text string as
a
> whole
> if the width of the string in object space is gesater that the width.
> However,
> text would not be stretched to the width if the natural width was
shorter.
>
> If you want to be sure a string will be an exact width - you need to
specify
> a
> width that you know will be too short and then use a modelling transform
to
> stretch it to the desired length.

The problem with "using a modelling transform to stretch it" is that you
don't know the width of the text in the first place. I added width to
allow difserent browsers to use difserent font families to satisfy the
various FontStyles based on what is available on the system. This means
you don't know what the width will be on any given system. If authors
cares about exact text placement they can use width to fit it exactly. I
don't think we should specify any such requirements on width.

>
> Should we define rules for people using bitmap fonts? (no)
> What if not enough widths are specified to match all of the strings?
> a) use last width.
> b) cycle (we are trying to get away from that)
> c) don`t render other strings (yuck)
>
> I like option A because one can easily specify a width for all of the
> strings.

Sounds good to me.

-- 
chris marrin      Silicon      http://www.sgi.com/Products/WebFORCE/WebSpace
(415) 390-5367    Graphics     http://reality.sgi.com/employees/cmarrin_engr/
[email protected]   Inc.         


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