AltME groups: search

On a fresh console: what does system/options/standard/face/font look 
like?

>>  system/options/standard/face/font
** Script Error: Invalid path value: standard
** Near: system/options/standard/face/font
>>

typo, sorry, system/standard/face/font

>> probe system/standard/face/font
make object! [
    name: "arial"
    style: none
    size: 12
    color: 0.0.0
    offset: 2x2
    space: 0x0
    align: 'center
    valign: 'center
    shadow: none
]

:-) I also hope we get answer to font situation rather quickly ... 
hopefully, as Jaime mentioned, it will be FreeType ....

REBOL [
	Title: "Local Index" 
	Type: 'index 
	dynamic: true 
	plugin-pane: 0.5
]

title "Local Files"
app 0.3

group "A" effect [multiply green] 
			 
group "B" icon %action.png

action "a\gitarre"    do [explore %/f/gitarre/]
action "a\view-root" do [explore view-root]
action "a\hamster"   do [call "H:\prog\Hamster\Hamster.exe"]

action "b\Internet" do [
	call "H:\Programme\offline-proxy-mm3\MM3-WebAssistant.bat"
	call "C:\Programme\discountsurfer\discountsurfer.exe"
	call "H:\Programme\Mozilla\Firefox\firefox.exe"
	call "C:\Programme\Opera75\Opera.exe"
] 


action "b\Firefox" do [	call "H:\Programme\Mozilla\Firefox\firefox.exe"] 
icon %web-surf-action.png

action "c\desktop"   do [editor view-root/desktop.r] 
action "c\imap"      do [editor %imap-handler.r] 

file "Info" %info.txt
file "T\Test" %test1.r 
file "T\Test2" %test2.r 
file "T\Test" %test3.r

; this is composed ----
file (form now/date) %dummy.r

action "Click me" #clickme do [
            alert "hi"

            [Text "This will be displayed within the desktop" [alert "ho"]]
          ]

action "Click me 2" #clickme2 do [
            alert "hi"
			; no return value, so nothing displayed in the desktop
          ]

action "PRINT" do [print "^/^/----------------------^/^/^/"]
action "prin somethin" do ["yea"]
file "t\Test" %dummy.r

; this will draw the plugin
app-draw [face /local cl-size][
   cl-size: to pair! reduce [face/size/x 50]
	face/pane: layout/offset[
		at 0x0 
	   text "00:00:00" cl-size center 255.155.40 with [
   		font: [size: 24]
	   	rate: 1
		   user-data: none
   		feel: make feel [
	   		engage: func [face action event i] [
		   		if user-data <> now/time [
			   		i: form user-data: now/time
				   	if 7 > length? i [append i ":00"]
					   face/text: i
   					show face
	   			]
		   	]
      	]
      ]
      text "TEST" 
		button "hi" [alert "you!"] 
   	button "CLOSE" [unview/all] 
	] 0x0 face/size 
]

; if you need to redraw after a resize, not yet used
app-resize [new-size][]

When only windows version of 1.3.2 has font support in AGG, is it 
considered as an OS specific feature? I hope not.

A question for those who have delved into View facets; which facets 
(apart from 'data) are *not* used by View? 'action seems to be reserved 
for the VID feel system, 'span seems to have an undefined effect 
if used. The complete list is:

	type: 'face
	offset: 0x0
	size: 100x100
	span: none
	pane: none
	text: none
	color: 200.200.200
	image: none
	effect: none
	data: none

 edge: make object! [color: 200.200.200 image: none effect: none size: 
 2x2]

 font: make object! [name: "arial" style: none size: 12 color: 0.0.0 
 offset: 2x2 space: 0x0 align: 'center valign: 'center shadow: none]

 para: make object! [origin: 2x2 margin: 2x2 indent: 0x0 tabs: 40 
 wrap?: true scroll: 0x0]

 feel: make object! [redraw: none detect: none over: none engage: 
 none]
	saved-area: none
	rate: none
	show?: true
	options: none
	parent-face: none
	old-offset: none
	old-size: none
	line-list: none
	changes: none
	face-flags: 0
	action: none


I'm trying to determine which facets I can safely use when not using 
VID.

Graham: It's *Alpha* so no hard benchmark results yet, but moving 
from VID to View for mdViewer cut the WinXP process size from 15MB 
to 12MB and improved speed threefold ... I'd expect similiar things 
from a View-based GUI.


Anton: "No it doesn't Ashley, read again." - I thought the opening 
paragraph of the referenced document made it pretty clear; "Facets 
are attributes of a face. Facets include the face's location, size, 
color, image, font, style, paragraph format, rendering effects, behavior 
functions, and other details.", but I'll probably use the term attributes 
anyway as facets might be confused with faces.

Louis: Good documentation can make *anything* seem simple! ;)


Robert: Maybe. Main purpose of a View-GUI is for high-performance 
scripts where you really want to know what *every* face is doing.

; I did a dif between the functions in VIEW and those in CORE for 
a default install.  What I get is this ( I hope it is useful to have 
al 106  in one place )

 alert  brightness?  caret-to-offset  center-face  choose  clear-face 
  clear-fields  confine  crypt-strength?

 dbug  deflag-face  desktop  dh-compute-key  dh-generate-key  dh-make-key 
  do-events  do-face  do-face-alt  do-thru  

 draw  dsa-generate-key  dsa-make-key  dsa-make-signature  dsa-verify-signature 
  dump-face  dump-pane  edge-size?  

 editor  emailer  exists-thru?  find-key-face  find-window  flag-face 
  flag-face?  flash  focus  get-face  

 get-net-info  get-style  hide  hide-popup  hilight-all  hilight-text 
  hsv-to-rgb  in-window?  inform  

 insert-event-func  inside?  install  launch-thru  layout  link-relative-path 
  load-image  load-stock  

 load-stock-block  load-thru  local-request-file  make-face  notify 
  offset-to-caret  open-events  outside?  

 overlap?  path-thru  read-net  read-thru  remove-event-func  request 
  request-color  request-date  request-dir  

 request-download  request-file  request-list  request-pass  request-text 
  reset-face  resize-face  rgb-to-hsv  

 rsa-encrypt  rsa-generate-key  rsa-make-key  screen-offset?  scroll-drag 
  scroll-face  scroll-para  set-face  

 set-font  set-para  set-style  set-user  show  show-popup  size-text 
  span?  stylize  textinfo  unfocus  

 uninstall  unlight-text  unview  vbug  view  viewed?  win-offset? 
  within?

Someone asked me about NicomDoc recently. I just added font support 
and escape mode (to turn on and off using backslash as escape character), 
changed some definitions and fixed a bug or two. I'll add options 
and make it version 1.0 targeted at HTML output. Should happen within 
the next days, where I'll release it.

Paul, One thing to keep in mind is that you should want to leverage 
html stylesheets. 

In your make-doc version add the reference to the class then let 
a .css determine most of the presentation parameters.

For example, I wanted to be able to add a question and have it presented 
with a heading very similar to a note box

but to have a different label i.e. "Question" and a distinct look.
This change was required to parse it 

 ["=q" | "q:" | "question:"] text-line (emit-text 'question) |

from the input stream. This emitted the html 


 question [emit [{<p><div class="question"> Question: &nbsp;&nbsp; 
  } doc/2 {</div>}]]


Change the make-doc script you are using to emit a reference to your 
stylesheet instead of inlining it.

I put this in my css to present a question in box that stands out 
(for me)
  div.question {
     	padding: 10px;
        background-color: linen;
      	font-size: 14px;       
     	font-family: Helvetica;
        border: 6px groove gold;
		width: 90%;
  }  

The reason for .css is that now you can change the stylesheet and 
don't have to change the html or 

re-generate it. If you want your question box to tan instead of linen 
then you just change your .css

If you have something you feel strongly about you can create a soapbox 
style.
For more on this see http://www.csszengarden.com/

p.s. when you change make-doc, clearly identify the lines that you 
change with comments so that when 

you get a new version you can retrofit it and get the benefit of 
the upgrades.

Mike - I have already kinda did like you said as I somewhat copied 
note but made a new verse type.  The thing that looks like would 
make madedoc better (might have it already) if if each item could 
be parse with styles also.  For example - come up with a way to parse 
one single line item into 3 parts but format each part different 
with different color for this and different font for that but have 
it still be able to be in the template.

Here is my code:

append top text
pdf: copy []
page: compose/deep [
    textbox [  
        font Courier 4.5 as-is (:top) 
    ] 
] 
append/only pdf page
write/binary %deposit-slip.pdf layout-pdf pdf
browse %deposit-slip.pdf

what would the possibilities be for adding fonts? I need access to 
use the OCR font now...

what you have to do is: extend the typesetter so that it can read 
font descriptions and build glyph width and kerning pairs tables 
(Volker has an AFM file parser); extend the dialect so that it can 
somehow recognize and load external fonts; study the PDF reference 
to see what you need to do to include the font in the PDF file (at 
the very least, you have to provide a font object; i'm not sure if 
this is sufficient, but i hope that the reader is able to load external 
fonts once you give it the font name and description; in theory you 
should embed the font into the PDF file, which usually means parsing 
the font file and so on)

louis: yes, I've used it in a few apps so far with great success, 
because it's very stable and fast. the only things I miss are better 
font handling, some better docs and importing vector drawings into 
a PDF. Getting OCR fonts in will really make it useful for me.

1) no; 2) no. Sorry. Supporting other charsets requires changes to 
the code AND to the font metrics data. About pdf-tables, never got 
to document it at all. i don't have any simple example either, except 
from some i provided here or on the ml long time ago.

my plan is to eventually have that in version 2 (a first release 
of version 2 is due in a couple weeks). however, note that while 
the pdf format directly supports latin1 encoding, it does not support 
unicode encodings directly. so it's a pain to make it work. openoffice, 
for example, creates divides the characters you use in the document 
in groups of 256, then creates a new custom font for each group. 
(i also assume that the 14 standard fonts do not support unicode, 
so you need custom font support to be able to use unicode.)

Henrik: that can't be done, you need low level font access for text 
flow. and you can't do footers or text flow without that.

just typeset the first paragraph with the total-fit algo and actual 
font metrics. now i just add some page breaking (first fit), add 
the pdf file output from previous version, and i've got an alpha 
to test. :) (i'll be on vacation next week so this probably means 
the alpha will be available after that)

what we also need to see is different font styles within the columns 
of text.

bold and italic are a different font (i.e. you use Times-Italic instead 
of Times-Roman)

not yet. that will be possible when i implement unicode support (and 
you'll need a font with all the chars you want).

oldes: i have an utf8 parser too. however it's not that easy because 
the PDF format does not support unicode directly. you have to create 
custom fonts. i have to study this in detail, but i noticed that 
OpenOffice generates a font for each set of 256 characters.

oldes: unfortunately, no. he has to specify the encoding in the font 
description. the only "built-in" encodings are Adobe, WinANSI (latin1) 
and Mac. I think adobe is a variant of latin1.

so i will either need to figure out how to create a font encoding 
description that works for utf-16 (but i guess it would require a 
huge table, and so would make the documents big), or i'll need to 
use the same technique as OO

then, there's the problem of the fonts. TeX has its own fonts which 
are designed correctly. TTF is not even close to what MetaFont can 
do, and the standard symbol font is not as good as the TeX fonts. 
Even if I added a good formula renderer to the pdf maker, without 
a good font it wouldn't look very good anyway.

to do anything else font tricks are often being used. i wish they 
just had support for utf-8...

let me know if you find out that a new version of the format supports 
unicode or that there is a simple way to implement it. to me it looks 
like the only way would be to create your own 1 or 2 byte encoding 
with the glyphs you use, or to do like OpenOffice does - it creates 
a separate font for each set of 256 different characters and then 
selects the correct font for each character.

define-func 'drop-image [img font size /local iw ih lh mrgns] [
            (
                iw: img/size/x / 5.34
                ih: img/size/y / 5.34
                lh: pdfm/get-font-info font size
                lh: lh/max-height + lh/max-depth
                mrgns: copy [0 0]
                loop round/ceiling ih / lh - 1 [
                    repend mrgns [iw + 2 0]
                ]
                append mrgns [0 0]
                none
            )
            justify with margins mrgns box iw lh 0 [
                image xbl ybl - ih + lh iw ih img
            ] space 2
            font* font size
        ]

you had some font shape effects that were pretty impressive, can 
you pls post those ?

pen doesn't make contour around filled polygons 

Rebol/View crashes when drawing filled poligons partially out of 
visible face area = you cannot zoom/move any object out of face borders 
- very annoying problem (this problem doesn't crash latest Rebol/Link...instead 
of it interpret shows "not enough memory" error) 

DRAW's 'text command doesn't recognize underlined font style (manipulating 
text will be explained in the next issue of ZINE...Watch out!) 
my enhancement dreams:


missing 'ellipse command - why there is no posible to make elipse 
when 'circle is available?!? 

missing 'point or 'dot command - currently you have to write [line 
10x10 10x10] to make single dot at 10x10 coords on the screen 
missing 'round command - DRAW cannot make arcs in a simple way 

missing 'fill-pattern command - for simple texturing of filled polygons

this is the code whith image-patterns:


fnt: make face/font [size: 240] view layout [box 800x260 white effect 
[draw [pen logo.gif font fnt text 1 "REBOL"]]]

Q for javascript/CSS guru.


How to change the font weigth of an <input type="text"> field with 
Javascript ?


I have a function called on OnChange() event that check the value 
and I want to display the field in Bold if value > 0, or normal if 
value = 0

From http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32

A few user agents support the WIDTH attribute. It provides a hint 
to the user agent of the required width in characters. The user agent 
can use this to select an appropriate font size or to indent the 
content appropriately.

It's not the width of the line.

Dideir, yeah we ran into this recently in allowing people to escape 
code inside our Wiki.  We allow Rebol, HTML, etc.

At first it seems counter intuitive. But this is the way of HTML.


Aside from the straight forward concept as Sunanda mentioned, if 
you are willing to process the code a little you can count the characters 
of the longest line, and scale the text to match the final output. 
 A couple of points dropped on a font stil are readable, and many 
sentences still fit.


Another is to encode the whole thing, in other words convert all 
the "<" for example to escape sequences.  Now HTML will wrap everything 
automatically.

Max - re templating. Yes, I use "code", actually not code, just markers 
like <font face="Arial" size="2"><!--name-->ne<!--end--></font></td>

Depends to what degree you use html to define visual aspects.  The 
comparison above is talking old school page design where your markup 
contains all the bgcolors, widths, font colours, etc. (FrontPage-esque) 
 Typically this approach does significantly increase page size.  
Using tables mainly as an alternative to <div> as a way to divide 
up page components in an otherwise CSS driven design isn't going 
to be at all costly in comparison.  Actual bandwidth cost I guess 
is case specific.

I have a question regarding fonts on web-sites: Take a look at this 
one here: http://www.binaryage.com/


It uses a font called PLAY which I like a lot. This font wasn't installed 
on my system, but the web-site displayed it. It's even not one of 
the standard web fonts I know. Why does this work?

Set-Net not provided.
** Script Error: stylize has no value
** Near: stylize [
    wmtxt: text "Test" 255.255.0 font-size 16
    wtext: text " " 640 as-is no-wrap black white
    box: box...
** Press enter to quit...

Does freetype support also imply type 1 font support?

From the FreeType site:
#

By default, FreeType 2 supports the following font formats.

    * TrueType fonts (and collections)
    * Type 1 fonts
    * CID-keyed Type 1 fonts
    * CFF fonts
    * OpenType fonts (both TrueType and CFF variants)
    * SFNT-based bitmap fonts
    * X11 PCF fonts
    * Windows FNT fonts
    * BDF fonts (including anti-aliased ones)
    * PFR fonts
    * Type 42 fonts (limited support)

(but I haven' t tested all those font formats, just ttf)

I can test it if you point me to some free font to download.

ah, found /gsfonts dir in my distro...will test some font from it 
in a minute...

the way I see it, try a simple make face [text: "simplerhack" font: 
make face/font []] I don't know if the font object is directly available 
in rebface, but try it.

actually I think it is. when we were fixing 2.7.6 for OSX Leopard 
we had a very similar problem and I had to build rebface with a face 
that loaded a font. it was done entirely without VID.

I'm also getting a lot of "misplaced item" errors but again only 
in encapped version....

Unknown word or style: rejoin
Misplaced item: ["This version: " this_version]
Unknown word or style: rejoin
Misplaced item: ["Last Update: " last_db_update/date]
Misplaced item: 150
Misplaced item: "6-TOWE"
Misplaced item: [get_sections cur_chap: copy face/text]
Misplaced item: 450
Unknown word or style: red
Unknown word or style: font-size
Misplaced item: 25
Unknown word or style: bold
Unknown word or style: underline
Unknown word or style: chtit
Misplaced item: 0.0
Misplaced item: 255.100.100
Misplaced item: 90.90.90
Unknown word or style: rejoin

Misplaced item: ["14." " " "MAINTENANCE OF PORTABLE ALUMINUM LADDERS"]

Misplaced item: [my-scroll-panel/access/set-scroll-offset my-scroll-panel 
0x-1 * 699x15723 focus]
Misplaced item: 0x0
Unknown word or style: edge
Misplaced item: [color: black size: 2x2]
Unknown word or style: effect
Misplaced item: [merge luma -80]

That may also be the problem...some of the officers have bad eyes 
and may have increased font size..I'll check it out. Thanks for the 
hints Gregg.

Latest build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-023.zip

Highlights include:

	- Changed default font from "Arial" to "Verdana"
	- Added label and table widgets
	- Added window-level 'do block support

 - Added 'reverse keyword to support windows style right-to-left widget 
 placement
	- Renamed set-title to show-title
	- Merged %request-file.r into %requestors.r
	- Renamed %gui.r to %rebgui.r and prefixed other files with same

Read more about these changes here:

	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-2.2
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-3.3.2
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-3.4
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-4.3
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-5.15
	http://www.dobeash.com/it/rebgui/display.html#section-5.26

;	15-Mar-2005 Pascal Lefevre
	;	27-Apr-2005 Pascal Lefevre

    ;    4-Jun-2005 Christian Ensel (minor color and shape suggestions)
	led: make face [
		size:	-1x4

  effect:	[draw [pen edge-color fill-pen window-color box 0x0 0x0]]
		font:	default-font
		para:	make default-para [origin: as-pair base-size 2]
		feel:	make default-feel [
			redraw: func [face act pos /local colors] [
				if act = 'show [
                    colors: reduce case [
						any [face/data = 1 face/data = true]  [
                            [btn-text-color btn-text-color]
                        ]
                        any [face/data = 0 face/data = false] [
                            [edge-color btn-up-color]
                        ]
                        true [
                            [edge-color white]
                        ]
                    ]
                    face/effect/draw/2: colors/1
                    face/effect/draw/4: colors/2
				]
			]
		]
		init:	does [
			if word? data [data: to logic! data]

   if negative? size/x [size/x: 1000000 size/x: 4 + para/origin/x + 
   first size-text self]
			effect/draw/6/y: unit-size 
			effect/draw/7: as-pair unit-size * 3 unit-size * 2,5
		]
	]

button: make rebface [
		size:	12x4
		text:	""
		data:	reduce [
			load #{

    89504E470D0A1A0A0000000D49484452000000070000000E0806000000E35D06

    1B0000001374455874536F667477617265005245424F4C2F566965778FD91678

    0000006D49444154789C7DD0210EC0201404510EC78DB90937402030080C09E6

    3743B250DAA62423D8574C9D9939EFBD3D6377B7CB3ADA9C608CB1EABD6FD440

    AD35ABB56E1410504A39911704A49436F2B502628C6FD4AB0319D527E69C672F

    6450C0811A2884305B481A0513FF7EFC050B081E1B1469CACD0000000049454E
				44AE426082
				}
			load #{

    89504E470D0A1A0A0000000D49484452000000070000000E0806000000E35D06

    1B0000001374455874536F667477617265005245424F4C2F566965778FD91678

    0000004E49444154789C63F8FFFF3F838B8BCB7F740C12874B6CDEBC198E6162

    0CE812C80A50242F5DBAF4FFE1C387608C2209921828499802ACAE8561E28D85

    09BE7CF9125512844182300C0F3E7C010F0010F10EBBAF4E057A000000004945
				4E44AE426082
			}
			load #{

    89504E470D0A1A0A0000000D49484452000000070000000E0806000000E35D06

    1B0000001374455874536F667477617265005245424F4C2F566965778FD91678

    0000007049444154789C63F8FFFF3F838B8BCB7F740C12874BFCBB3F0B8E6162

    0C30893F97AAE018A60045F2FBF7EF244AC28CFBF4E9139C0D97FC753C118CDF

    BD7B0767C3257FEEF306E3972F5FC2D9C449FED8620AC64F9F3E85B331241F3E

    7C885B1219C32541F8E974063886071FBE800700F5AD02E08E740D5300000000
				49454E44AE426082
			}
		]
		image:	first data
		effect:	[mix extend 3x7 1x1]
		font:	make default-font [align: 'center valign: 'middle]
		feel:	make default-feel [
			over: func [face act pos] [
				face/image: either act [face/data/3] [face/data/1]
				show face
			]
			engage: func [face act event] [
				either act = 'down [
					face/image: face/data/2 show face face/action face
				][
					if act = 'up [face/image: face/data/1 show face]
				]
			]
		]
		init:	does [effect/4: size - image/size]
	]

the only thing that I wasnt able to do is use TTF font files with 
Inscape

Latest build available at: http://www.dobeash.com/files/RebGUI-034.zip


*** Unzip this file into your existing RebGUI 0.3.0 distribution. 
Requires View 1.3.1 ***

Highlights include:

	- request-dir requestor updated
	- alert and question requestors added

 - Tab focus expanded to include edit-list handling (see %focus-demo.r 
 for details)
	- Button image now resizes correctly

 - text-list widget totally rewritten to use [newly documented] View 
 1.3.1 iterated faces
	- text-list now supports Ctrl+click, Shift+click, Ctrl+A

 - text-list scrollbar now reacts to current display state (eg. disappears 
 if not required, alters dragger ratio as rows are added, etc) 
	- check and radio widget aesthetics improved

 - added options support to layout function and text-list and check 
 widgets

 - changed base-size from 4x5pixels to 5x4 pixels (better granularity)
	- reworked all widget sizes to account for above
	- fixed scaling problems with many widgets
	- updated focus-demo.r

 - greatly enhanced and expanded %tour.r to demonstrate more variations 
 and usage cases
	- added "live" unit-size and font-size drop-lists to %tour.r
	- numerous other minor bug fixes and coding improvements

In the works


 - table widget being rewritten along the same lines as the new improved 
 text-list widget
	- aiming for a 0.4.0 beta release prior to DevCon2005

field font [align: 'right]
should work

because i use it to make font from the bitmap and there is the y 
axis counted from below, you may also aske why there is the innerLine 
(it's because to render the hole correctly there must be correct 
direction - it could be done in the rebcode, but I found it when 
I had the inner tracing done and don't want to do it again - so I 
just changed the "line" to "innerLine" and must fix it in the to-pairs 
function -> for outer shape I use append and for holes insert :)

here is example how to use it in real life: do http://box.lebeda.ws/~hmm/rebol/projects/font-tools/latest/test.r

interesting comparison of different font-rendering techniques - http://antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.html

I wonder why it's not already possible... I remember there was a 
little support for font embedding in Netscape.

once you have a typesetter written in rebol, though, you can apply 
it to draw too; draw doesn't offer the low level access to font data 
you need, so that will need to be separate; but if you can do it 
for pdf, you can do it for whatever, if you use the same fonts.

I haven't followed it, but did you solve font positioning in DRAW 
vs. postscript?

I don't have a problem with font positioning in draw and postscript.

looks like you need to parse AFM files to get the width information 
out of your font files to make proper font justification. so we need 
to build an AFM parser?

Also new font options are included. bold and italic is valid words 
inside the font block. And "Times" can be written as "Times" or "Times-Roman", 
upper- lower-case doesn't matter, the dialect should figure it out.

pekr, that's very hard, because the problem is also with font sizes. 
DRAW doesn't follow good conventions for sizes right now. VIEW is 
better, but it's all aliased graphics.

also with two different font rendering engines... wouldn't View get 
smaller if freetype was used in View as well?

you can't use current View for that task - you don't know font's 
baseline, so it's not possible to position different sizes of fonts 
on same line.

Yes, you are right, there are two different font engines which is 
not much efficient. Moreover the DRAW text rendering was meant to 
be just for really simple labeling(the main text engine in R2 is 
still the original FACE text rendering) and it would need some improvements 
for more complex usage. All this should be unified and improved in 
R3. There will be only one text engine with rich-text dialect.

REBOL PostScript Dialect v. 0.4.0 released: http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/postscript/postscript.r

Documentation here: http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/postscript/postscript.html

Added MediaType, ManualFeed and MediaPosition to control paper selection 
(tray). Also made Courier font ISOLatin1 encoded. And better PS comments 
in the output according to PostScript Language Document Structuring 
Conventions Specification.

It may be more clear, if we look at PS as a low level language to 
control some type of printer or typesetter. It goes like: move to 
this position, print this text using this font, move to this other 
position, print text, ...

Landscape is done with 90 degree rotation before doing the print 
command.

This with large printfiles, it's the same, that happens, if you print 
text using a font, that the printer doesn't know. Everything is converted 
to image data, and one page can be several MB.

looks like getting something so simple as the font height is rather 
difficult in postscript

Geomol, I have the structure change needed for text to support the 
font height, so the vertical centering can be made, but I just can't 
find the postscript commands necessary to obtain the font height.

you define the font height when you set the font.

the width of the text yes, not the height. and I may not know the 
font at rendering time as that may be set in a completely different 
part of the program.

Got the font size to work, but it doesn't take the baseline into 
account.

The changes are:


- Stores the font size inside PS every time a new font is selected. 
This is not used however, but perhaps is useful in the future.

- Added bottom, middle and top alignment for TEXT. Similarly to how 
you specify a size for LEFT, CENTER and RIGHT, you can enter a size 
for TOP, MIDDLE and BOTTOM:

Some text
 center 400 middle 200

Both sets are optional. The default alignment is LEFT and BOTTOM.

My changes are marked HMK in the source. I hope it is of use.

The problem is to get the height accurately for all glyphs for a 
font (I just got that now). Some fonts have very high tops and very 
low bottoms and you want that to work for any font and letter combination 
we throw at it. it would be harder to get that information inside 
REBOL than inside postscript.

I got it rendered now so that the vertical position is at least consistent 
now, but the font is offset a few points too far down. I don't know 
why yet, but it's probably the baseline again.

there is another method which is to get the bbox information from 
the font metric file itself. it's much faster, since it's just lookup, 
but I couldn't find an example of how to read it.

so my current method is Graham's, except for calculating the entire 
alphabet. we should probably work on getting that information from 
the font metric file instead.

So it doesn't matter, how high the font is.

The baseline problem is the one I'm hunting a solution for. About 
the font metrics, the bbox for the whole font is stored in FontBBox 
in the font dictionary.

and this information shouldn't need to be calced if we can get that 
from FontBBox in the font dictionary. still hunting for how to obtain 
it. :-)

what I did at first was just to use the font size. that doesn't work, 
because it does not take the baseline into account.

The bbox information for the entire font is stored in each font metric 
file as a [llx, lly, urx, ury] coordinate set, so I shouldn't need 
to calculate it. This information is crucial in order to get one 
line of vertically centered text. I already got everything in place 
except that particular number. :-)

Isn't this centered?

PageSize A4
page [
	font [Times 40] linewidth 0
	at 0x421 "Centered text" center 595
]

as mentioned before, that won't work, because the font information 
is not obtainable from inside REBOL. it has to be done inside postscript. 
I've already tried that method a year ago and it failed. :-)

There is no information about font (other than Times 40) in my example.

ok, tell me then the algorithm for calculating the font height inside 
REBOL. :-) you cannot possibly know without reading and parsing the 
.PFM files yourself.

and as mentioned at first, I already tried the font size... doesn't 
work.

Why would I need the font height? I didn't need that in my example 
to center the text.

PageSize A4
page [
	font [Times 18]
	at 60x421 "abcdefg"
	font [Times 36]
	at 130x421 "abcdefg"
	font [Times 96]
	at 260x421 "abcdefg"
]

Do you have the psrefman.pdf document for PS second edition? Seciton 
5.4 has a drawing of font positioning.

But you're right, that if you really want that, then you need to 
get info from each letter in the font.

but I do wish that each char in a font had a center point that indicates 
the absolute center of a character both horizontally and vertically. 
horizontally, that would be individual for each char, but vertically 
it has to be identical for all chars, like the baseline is.

I can see, that text in tables in html is centered more like you 
want it, at least in Safari. Actually the text is much lower in Safari, 
so there is more space above the text than below, if you use words 
with 'g'. I can't judge, if they do a simple calculation or use the 
font box.

And when I say the letter is tall in Helvetica or Times, that means 
it may not be so in other fonts. I don't believe a font like Verdana 
does this. This is why when getting the absolute center for a font, 
you must calculate it using all glyphs in the font.

This is with the latest beta ...

>> page: read http://127.0.0.1/show.cgi
URL Parse: none none 127.0.0.1 none none show.cgi
Net-log: ["Opening" "tcp" "for" "HTTP"]
connecting to: 127.0.0.1
Net-log: {GET /show.cgi HTTP/1.0
Accept: */*
Connection: close
User-Agent: REBOL View 1.3.2.3.1
Host: 127.0.0.1
}
Net-log: "HTTP/1.1 200 OK"
Net-log: ["low level read of " 2048 "bytes"]
Net-log: ["low level read of " 2048 "bytes"]

== {<HTML><BODY><FONT FACE='ARIAL' SIZE='-1'><a href="/">Back</a><br><br>
<B>Script path :</B> /E/cheyenne916/Cheyenne/www/ <BR><BR...

>> page: read/custom http://127.0.0.1/show.cgireduce ['post join 
"content=" url-encode content ]
URL Parse: none none 127.0.0.1 none none show.cgi
Net-log: ["Opening" "tcp" "for" "HTTP"]
connecting to: 127.0.0.1
Net-log: {POST /show.cgi HTTP/1.0
Accept: */*
Connection: close
User-Agent: REBOL View 1.3.2.3.1
Host: 127.0.0.1
Referer: http://127.0.0.1/show.cgi
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 147479
}
Net-log: none

** User Error: Error.  Target url: http://127.0.0.1/show.cgicould 
not be retrieved.  Server response: none

** Near: page: read/custom http://127.0.0.1/show.cgireduce ['post 
join "content=" url-encode content]
>>