morreale@bierstadt.scd.ucar.edu (Peter Morreale) (01/31/91)
This is a minor question for all the font builders out there, but
I'd like to know how to handle it....
In my *Xt* app I have several text widgets where I control the
width of the widget. The idea is to convey to the user that a certain
widget can only "accept" "n" characters. (I also use alot of real estate,
so I want to conserve it where appropriate...)
What I do is to retrieve the width (in pixels) of a single character of
the user specified (or default) font and then multiply and set that width
accordingly.
This works fine for the fixed width fonts (naturally :-), but I didn't
account for variable width fonts. For example, the font I am currently
using in the app ranges in width from 5 (" ") to 13 ("W") pixels in
width.
Is there any way I can find out the say "average" width of the
characters in a font (short of looping through all the characters..)
*or* are there a relatively set group of characters which *generally*
show the range of widths within a font? (then I could get the width for
that string and produce an average width...)
(Please note that I am only interested in ASCII characters. Should the
user specify a "symbol" type font, well... )
How can I handle this? Thanks for all and any tips...
-PWM
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Peter W. Morreale email: morreale@ncar.ucar.edu
Nat'l Center for Atmos Research voice: (303) 497-1293
Scientific Computing Division
Consulting Office
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