[comp.lang.postscript] Justified Text

pjb@tcom.stc.co.uk (Peter J. Bishop) (09/22/88)

I am trying to write a program (in C - or postscript if its possible) that will
take the input, and produce the necessary PostScript code to write justified
text (similar to troff).

My questions are:

a) Has anyone done this, and if so how?

b) If not, does anyone know where I could start looking to find out the
   character widths for each font.

As always, thanks in advance,

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Bishop.  <pjb@tcom.stc.co.uk> || ...!mcvax!ukc!stc!pjb
STC TNDD, Harlow Technical Centre, 20-22 Edinburgh Way, Harlow ESSEX CM20 2DE
Phone : +44 279 626626 x2795

pvo1478@neptune.uucp (Paul O'Neill) (09/24/88)

In article <647@jura.tcom.stc.co.uk> pjb@tcom.stc.co.uk (Peter J. Bishop) writes:
>I am trying to write a program (in C - or postscript if its possible) that will
>take the input, and produce the necessary PostScript code to write justified
>text (similar to troff).
>


Just copy it out of Adobe's Green Book:  Postscript Language Program Design.



Paul O'Neill                 pvo@oce.orst.edu
Coastal Imaging Lab
OSU--Oceanography
Corvallis, OR  97331         503-754-3251

lupin3@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (-=/ Larry Hastings /=-) (09/26/88)

+-In article <647@jura.tcom.stc.co.uk>, pjb@tcom.stc.co.uk (Peter J. Bishop) wrote:-
+----------
|
|I am trying to write a program (in C - or postscript if its possible) that will
| take the input, and produce the necessary PostScript code to write justified
| text (similar to troff).
| 
| My questions are:
| 
| a) Has anyone done this, and if so how?
| 
| b) If not, does anyone know where I could start looking to find out the
|    character widths for each font.
| 
| Peter Bishop.  <pjb@tcom.stc.co.uk> || ...!mcvax!ukc!stc!pjb
+----------

  a) Yes, of course.  Just as an example, the Sprint formatter (Borland's
Sprint, for DOS machines, has a seperate editor and formatter) takes text and
produces beautiful justified text.  (You have to do your own hyphenation, as it
isn't that smart; at least it has conditional hyphens.. nevermind.)  As to
HOW they did it is quite interesting, but it would take a lot of explaining...
their formatter is very versitile, and makes not only beautiful PS text but
beautiful text on a variety of printers.  If you want more info, get a copy
of Sprint and start dissecting it, and dissecting both the data for Postscript
printers for its formatter, and the PS it spits out therafter.
  b) Yes.  A program came free with Final Word II (update 2.20, anyways) that
you sent to your printer and it would send back the character widths of a
particular font in a particular size, nicely formatted to be used as data
for Final Word's formatter.  I don't remember if this code is copyrighted; if
it isn't, I'd be happy to send you a copy (mail such a request to my work
address, shown below.)

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