fit to width by negative letterspacing or narrowing

fit to width by negative letterspacing or narrowing

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Hello again, it's been a while... ;-)

I need to pack fixed lines into a fixed width box.

Some years ago I had something similar in plain PostScript, where I  
pre-calculated the width of a text box, let the default font if it  
would fit my max size, otherwise try a narrow font and if that wasn’t  
enough decreased font size until it would fit.

This time I've only one font and must not decrease font size, but must  
use negative kerning and perhaps some artificial narrowing.
How can I do that with ConTeXt?
I use MkIV, so any Lua solution is welcome.


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://wiki.contextgarden.net
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

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Re: fit to width by negative letterspacing or narrowing

[Hans Hagen]

On 17-5-2011 1:25, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:
> Hello again, it's been a while... ;-)
>
> I need to pack fixed lines into a fixed width box.
>
> Some years ago I had something similar in plain PostScript, where I
> pre-calculated the width of a text box, let the default font if it would
> fit my max size, otherwise try a narrow font and if that wasn’t enough
> decreased font size until it would fit.
>
> This time I've only one font and must not decrease font size, but must
> use negative kerning and perhaps some artificial narrowing.
> How can I do that with ConTeXt?
> I use MkIV, so any Lua solution is welcome.

\starttext

\definefontfeature[realugly][default][extend=0.25]

\definedfont[Serif*realugly] Only You Can Read This

\stoptext


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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: fit to width by negative letterspacing or narrowing

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 2011-05-17 um 13:53 schrieb Hans Hagen:

> On 17-5-2011 1:25, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:
>> Hello again, it's been a while... ;-)
>>
>> I need to pack fixed lines into a fixed width box.
>>
>> Some years ago I had something similar in plain PostScript, where I
>> pre-calculated the width of a text box, let the default font if it  
>> would
>> fit my max size, otherwise try a narrow font and if that wasn’t  
>> enough
>> decreased font size until it would fit.
>>
>> This time I've only one font and must not decrease font size, but  
>> must
>> use negative kerning and perhaps some artificial narrowing.
>> How can I do that with ConTeXt?
>> I use MkIV, so any Lua solution is welcome.
>
> \starttext
>
> \definefontfeature[realugly][default][extend=0.25]
>
> \definedfont[Serif*realugly] Only You Can Read This
>
> \stoptext

Thank you - but this is fixed narrowing. I also found stretching to a  
fixed width using \stretched:

\hbox to 3.9cm{\stretched{Täxt wÿth ſpöciäl çhaŕàćťërs}}

(You don’t need to escape Unicode chars anymore, in contrast to the  
docs/source.)

But what I really need is some width checking like "if this line is  
wider than 4cm, then use stretching/narrowing".
I don’t want to murder typography if the text is short enough.


Greetlings from Lake Constance!
Hraban
---
http://www.fiee.net/texnique/
http://wiki.contextgarden.net
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

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___________________________________________________________________________________

measuring alphabet length

[Christoph Redecker]

Hi,

I want to measure and typeset the lower case alphabet length. The LaTeX 
method doesn't work:

\newlength{\alphabetlength}
\settowidth{\alphabetlength}{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
\the\alphabetlength

ConTeXt gives me an error saying that \newlength{...} is undefined. Is 
it undefined because ConTeXt is built around TeX and not LaTeX and 
\newlength is a LaTeX command (I do not know if it actually is)?

How can I do the same thing in ConTeXt?

Regards

Christoph
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Re: measuring alphabet length

[luigi scarso]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 2:15 PM, Christoph Redecker
<christoph.redecker@tu-harburg.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to measure and typeset the lower case alphabet length. The LaTeX
> method doesn't work:
>
> \newlength{\alphabetlength}
> \settowidth{\alphabetlength}{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
> \the\alphabetlength
>
> ConTeXt gives me an error saying that \newlength{...} is undefined. Is it
> undefined because ConTeXt is built around TeX and not LaTeX and \newlength
> is a LaTeX command (I do not know if it actually is)?
yes

> How can I do the same thing in ConTeXt?
plain TeX is ok, for example,
\newdimen\AlphaBet
\bgroup \setbox10=\hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
\global\AlphaBet=\wd10\egroup
\the\AlphaBet

Use CamelCase to avoid conflits with ConTeXt names.

There are much more at
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Category:ConTeXt_programming
-- 
luigi
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Re: measuring alphabet length

[Wolfgang Schuster]

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Am 13.06.2011 um 14:30 schrieb luigi scarso:

>> How can I do the same thing in ConTeXt?
> plain TeX is ok, for example,
> \newdimen\AlphaBet
> \bgroup \setbox10=\hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
> \global\AlphaBet=\wd10\egroup
> \the\AlphaBet

\starttext

\dowithnextbox
  {\edef\AlphabetLength{\the\nextboxwd}}%
   \hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}

\AlphabetLength

\stoptext

Hans wrote also a command for this but it never went into core: http://archive.contextgarden.net/message/20070314.120612.adab0a8b.en.html

Wolfgang


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Re: measuring alphabet length

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Am 13.06.2011 um 14:34 schrieb Wolfgang Schuster:

> \starttext
> 
> \dowithnextbox
>   {\edef\AlphabetLength{\the\nextboxwd}}%
>    \hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
> 
> \AlphabetLength
> 
> \stoptext

Or even better:

\starttext

\dowithnextbox
  {\definemeasure[alphabetlength][\the\nextboxwd]}%
   \hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}

\measure{alphabetlength}

\stoptext

Wolfgang


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Re: measuring alphabet length

[Christoph Redecker]

Thanks to both of you, all three suggestions work. However, I don't 
understand all of the code. What does \dowithnextbox do exactly? In your 
last example, does it define the command \measure just for the next box?

And why does my email client display this thread as a reply to the "fit 
to width by negative letterspacing or narrowing" thread started by Henning?

Christoph

On 13.06.2011 14:38, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:
>
> Am 13.06.2011 um 14:34 schrieb Wolfgang Schuster:
>
>> \starttext
>>
>> \dowithnextbox
>>    {\edef\AlphabetLength{\the\nextboxwd}}%
>>     \hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
>>
>> \AlphabetLength
>>
>> \stoptext
>
> Or even better:
>
> \starttext
>
> \dowithnextbox
>    {\definemeasure[alphabetlength][\the\nextboxwd]}%
>     \hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
>
> \measure{alphabetlength}
>
> \stoptext
>
> Wolfgang
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
>
> maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
> webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
> archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
> wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: measuring alphabet length

[luigi scarso]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Christoph Redecker
<christoph.redecker@tu-harburg.de> wrote:
> Thanks to both of you, all three suggestions work. However, I don't
> understand all of the code. What does \dowithnextbox do exactly?
do something with the next box
> In your
> last example, does it define the command \measure just for the next box?
yes
>
> And why does my email client display this thread as a reply to the "fit to
> width by negative letterspacing or narrowing" thread started by Henning?
I don't know.
-- 
luigi
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netiquette (was: measuring alphabet length)

[Paul Menzel]

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Dear Christoph,


Am Montag, den 13.06.2011, 14:43 +0200 schrieb Christoph Redecker:

[…]

please do not top post when the people helping you use interleaved style
[1].

> And why does my email client display this thread as a reply to the "fit 
> to width by negative letterspacing or narrowing" thread started by Henning?

You used the Reply-To function of your mail client (Thunderbird) instead
of creating a new message (by for example clicking on the email address
of the ConTeXt list).

        References: <2BAEF00E-F2AE-4E30-9F86-548BB2A7B918@fiee.net>
                 <4DD261BD.60309@wxs.nl> <23BF6F68-2A11-45A8-936A-1CBA0536CDE0@fiee.net>
        In-Reply-To: <23BF6F68-2A11-45A8-936A-1CBA0536CDE0@fiee.net>


Thanks,

Paul


[1] http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_list_netiquette

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Re: measuring alphabet length

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Am 13.06.2011 um 14:43 schrieb Christoph Redecker:

> Thanks to both of you, all three suggestions work. However, I don't understand all of the code. What does \dowithnextbox do exactly?

It’s a high level version of Luigis example. The content of the box with the text “abc…” is saved in the box nextbox which can be accessed with \flushnextbox, the dimensions of the box are available through the command \nextboxht, \nextboxdp and \nextboxwd.

> In your last example, does it define the command \measure just for the next box?


\definemeasure is a alternative to dimension and use a macro to store a length. The first argument is the name of the length and you can access the value with the command \measure{<name>} but i forgot to expand the value of the box in my example and it should be:

\dowithnextbox
  {\expanded{\definemeasure[alphabetlength][\the\nextboxwd]}}%
   \hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}

Wolfgang

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Re: measuring alphabet length

[Hans Hagen]

On 13-6-2011 2:34, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:
>
> Am 13.06.2011 um 14:30 schrieb luigi scarso:
>
>>> How can I do the same thing in ConTeXt?
>> plain TeX is ok, for example,
>> \newdimen\AlphaBet
>> \bgroup \setbox10=\hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
>> \global\AlphaBet=\wd10\egroup
>> \the\AlphaBet
>
> \starttext
>
> \dowithnextbox
>    {\edef\AlphabetLength{\the\nextboxwd}}%
>     \hbox{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz}
>
> \AlphabetLength
>
> \stoptext
>
> Hans wrote also a command for this but it never went into core: http://archive.contextgarden.net/message/20070314.120612.adab0a8b.en.html

Ok, I'll add it. There will also be an expandable variant (proper 
typeset but the string must be utf characters only)

\starttext

\setwidthof{Robin Kirkham}\to\whatever

\whatever=\widthofstring{Robin Kirkham}

\stoptext



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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
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___________________________________________________________________________________