[cairo] Font extents mysteries

[Behdad Esfahbod]

Hi Tim,

I have no other idea why this may be happening to you.  Can't you simply
use cairo_text_extents(), or do you need to measure extents before
creating the final destination surface?

behdad


On Thu, 2007-05-10 at 20:46 +0200, Tim Teulings wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> >> Am I doing something wrong? Is there an error in my code or am I
> >> basing by code on wrong assumptions? 
> > 
> > The reason you see this behavior is that you are measuring with a
> > default font options object, but rendering to a surface that indeed has
> > non-default options (in this case, metrics hinting on).  Instead you can
> > use what cairo_surface_get_font_options() returns.
> 
> Thank you for your fast help! Your suggestion sounded reasonable so I
> added a
> 
>         cairo_surface_get_font_options(surface,options);
> 
> after the creation of the cairo_font_options_t during
> cairo_scaled_font_t initialization. So the code in question is now:
> 
>         cairo_select_font_face(cairo,name.c_str(),
>                                CAIRO_FONT_SLANT_NORMAL,
>                                CAIRO_FONT_WEIGHT_NORMAL);
> 
>         cairo_font_options_t *options;
> 
>         [Matrix initialisation code...]
> 
>         options=cairo_font_options_create();
>         cairo_surface_get_font_options(surface,options);
>         fontScaled=cairo_scaled_font_create(cairo_get_font_face(cairo),
>                                                            &scaleMatrix,
>                                                          &transformMatrix,
>                                                            options);
> 
>         cairo_font_options_destroy(options);			
> 
> This however did not help. The effect is still the same. So some more
> background:
> 
> The surface and cairo object I use during initialization of scaled_font
> are not identical to that I use for later drawing. That made your hint
> so reasonable :-)
> 
> The framework creates an hidden X11 window during startup and a
> corresponding surface cairo_xlib_surface_create. The cairo_t object for
> this surface is used for initial scaled font creation (and that is the
> reason why I use scaled fonts: to cache all possible styles of some
> always used default fix and proportional font). Later on I draw into
> other X11 windows (surfaces also created by cairo_xlib_surface_create)
> and offscreen bitmaps (using
> cairo_surface_create_similar(globalSurface,CAIRO_CONTENT_COLOR,width,height)
> on the global surface for the global, hidden X11 window). The
> corresponding cairo_t objects and then later used for drawing text as
> described. I however added some debugging code to proof that the
> font_options object returned by cairo_surface_get_font_options have the
> same values for the global surface and the later drawing surfaces!
> 
> Antialias 3
> Subpixels 1
> Hintstyle 4
> Hintmetrics 2
> 
> (Removing the font_options initialization code indeed shows, that the
> font options values are than different as assumed).
> 
> So this cannot (at least after I added the missing initialization you
> mentioned) be the cause and in fact by box drawing code still show
> differences and the same given words.
> 
> > But you really don't need to go that far (unless you are doing something
> > special).  All you need to do is to use cairo_text_extents() right after
> > cairo_select_font_face().  No need to deal with scaled fonts explicitly.
> 
> As told above I create scaled font objects to cache frequently used
> font, font_style, font_size combinations.
> 
> > Hope it helps and you are having fun with cairo!
> 
> The library is of high quality, the performance increase in the 1.4
> version is stunning and the response time for help request is
> astonishing :-)
> 
> I'm currently fixing some last missing problems and then plan to switch
> my few applications for the Nokia 800 to use cairo as drawing layer -
> dropping existing X11 code (besides using the Gtk theming engine for
> most of the drawing however :-/). The freedom of having its own GUI
> library :-)
> 
-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
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