Font Size Text Renderer Difficulties

[Brett Kosinski <br...@nortelnetworks.com>]

I have a relatively basic question (I think, anyway :) about how to output
decent plain text with FOP.  I'm just learning XSL-FO, and I'd like to use
it for generating nicely formatted text output.  However, I'm finding the
text spacing is coming out completely wrong.  Now, I searched the list, and
there was some mention of selecting a monospaced font and font size that
closely match the virtual font size used by the renderer (CPI=16.67, LPI=8).
However, after playing with the font-size specification, I think I'm missing
something, because I can't get decent output.  There's always excess space
between words, or, in some cases, not enough space (ie, words jumbled
together that shouldn't be).  

Now, to describe what I'm attempting, I want to generate text documents with
a page width of 58 characters and a height of 72 characters.  Now, this
theoretically shouldn't be tough... assuming the font was sized correctly, I
should just be able to specify the page width and heigh in em units (well,
assuming characters were square... I think this is partly the source of my
difficulties).  However, this isn't working.  Moreover, as I stated before,
the word spacing, etc, is all off.  So, could someone please give me some
pointers on appropriate font settings so I can get some decent plain text
output?  I can provide example XML and output if anyone wants it.  Anyway,
any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

Brett.