[cairo] Want to stretch my fonts

[Krzysztof Kosiński]

2010/7/28 Kayven Riese <kayvey at gmail.com>:
> but that takes only cr as an argument.. so it is going to scale my entire
> canvas right?  I need to learn to make my letters on a different canvas and
> combine the two canvases or something, don't I?

cairo_scale and related calls do not scale the canvas. They only
affect how the coordinates you give to cairo_move_to, cairo_line_to,
etc. are interpreted. If you scale non-uniformly it will also affect
how the stroke is drawn.

> The attached pngs are cellgram.png with line 86 commented out.. and the
> other file with the cairo_matrix_init_scale active.. I am seeing a
> translation instead of a vertical shear .. or.. umm.. I wanted to squish the
> word so it would fit in the cell.  I just wanted to do some numerical
> experiments (hence just plugged in 0.8 and 1).. what am I missing?

The text *is* squeezed vertically, but the initial font matrix also
contained a translation. By clearing the matrix and initializing it
with a scale, you are removing it. I'll post an explanation of what
you need to do to obtain the correct result in a few minutes.

> Do the scale factors multiply or add?  I am supply sy = 0.. maybe I want sy
> = 1

The scale factors always multiply. Zero X scale means nothing will be
visible because your drawing will be collapsed to a vertical line.

> But if I restore the context, have I done anything?  It seems if I restore
> the context I will lose the changes I am trying to make.

cairo_save and cairo_restore save and restore the current
transformation matrix and clip region, they do not save / restore
canvas contents. Everything you draw (using cairo_stroke, cairo_fill,
cairo_paint, etc.) between cairo_save and cairo_restore stays on the
canvas. Paths are also preserved. Take a look at section "Working with
Transforms" here:
http://cairographics.org/tutorial/

Regards, Krzysztof