RE: Metapost - text alignment

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 09:36 +1030, Young, Robert wrote:
> I completely agree that text_line is required for GTK and export to PS,
> PDF, bitmaps, etc. Users should be able to get reliable WYSYWIG export
> for these types of formats where fonts can be embedded or rendered
> directly. I'm of two minds on SVG...
>
> However, maybe I don't understand the complete picture here, but there
> are always going to be issues with fonts when exporting to some formats,
> like metapost. By forcing the exported output to be fitted to a box that
> is the wrong size for the resulting font/typesetting algorithm (because
> as you have said TeX has different typesetting to GTK), we are trying to
> force a square peg in a round hole.

I am hoping that's mainly a question of understanding the algorithm well
enough to tweak it to where the results are satisfactory.  But that
takes some work.

> If we had a LaTex render, it would be a different story. No one has the
> time to do one before 0.96 comes out. So my patch was aiming for
> something that would work in most instances. Using text_line blows up on
> equations, where as my proposed patch at least leaves the
> right/centre/left alignment correct, and gets the odd text width wrong
> (but within a couple of percent for sans, serif and monospace). I am
> very keen to receive examples of where it doesn't work so that I can
> improve it.

Having it a little shorter rather than a little longer is in general
better.  I think we shall go with your patch for 0.96.

-Lars