From: neil AT robots DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk (Neil Townsend)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Allegro / fonts - dumb new user seeks advice
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 11:36:10 GMT
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Message-ID: <1998Jul7.113610.16036@catorobots.ox.ac.uk>
References: <199807030019 DOT BAA27198 AT sable DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk> <6nip5d$88h$1 AT nnrp1 DOT dejanews DOT com>
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Originator: neil AT cato
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Frist, many thanks to Stefan Viljoen, George Foot, Bill Gillhespy and Dough
Eleveld for taking the time to answer my query. I have now resolved my
problem by using, as you suggested, ttf2pcx. For what it's worth I tried
botht the version that comes with allegttf and one from the allegro web
pages. Whilst I prefered the command line interface, I prefered the fonts
produced by the windows one (although it seems to multiply the point size
you give it by about 8, I think this is due to a misset 'big' Boolean in the
code, but my C++ is nonexistant.

The other thing I noticed, which doubtless you are all aware of, is that PCX
fonts drived from TTf fonts are quite high (especially using the DOS
TTF2PCX), with (sensibly) space for accents and descenders. Under allegro,
however, this information is not explicitly available (as far as I could
see) and it would be useful for aligning certain forms of text. Well, I
needed to know it anyway. So, in case it's of any use to anyone, here's a
hack solution to the problem, it assumes that the characters 0-9 and A-Z are
a sufficient description of non-descending, non-accented characters.

Yours,

Neil

void give_baseline_and_topgap_for_character_in_font(FONT *font, int c, int *baseline, int *topgap)
{
BITMAP *c_bmp;
int     i;
int     j;

c_bmp = font->dat.dat_prop->dat[c-32];

for (i=0; i<text_height(font); i++) {
    for (j=0; j<c_bmp->w; j++) {
        if (*(c_bmp->line[i] + j) != 0) {
            *topgap = i;
            j = c_bmp->w;
            i = text_height(font);
            }
        }
    }

for (i=(text_height(font)-1); i>= 0; i--) {
    for (j=0; j<c_bmp->w; j++) {
        if (*(c_bmp->line[i] + j) != 0) {
            *baseline = text_height(font) - i + 1;
            j = c_bmp->w;
            i = 0;
            }
        }
    }
}

void give_baseline_and_topgap_for_font(FONT *font, int *baseline, int *topgap)
{
int      i;
int      c_bl;
int      c_tg;

*baseline = text_height(font);
*topgap   = text_height(font);

for (i='A'; i<='Z'; i++) {
    give_baseline_and_topgap_for_character_in_font(font, i, &c_bl, &c_tg);
    if (c_bl < *baseline) *baseline = c_bl;
    if (c_tg < *topgap)   *topgap   = c_tg;
    }

for (i='0'; i<='9'; i++) {
    give_baseline_and_topgap_for_character_in_font(font, i, &c_bl, &c_tg);
    if (c_bl < *baseline) *baseline = c_bl;
    if (c_tg < *topgap)   *topgap   = c_tg;
    }
}
-- 
Neil Townsend   +44 (1865) 273121   neil AT robots DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk