Text size

[Scott Moore <sc...@netdecide.com>]

I'm using Batik directly in a Java program to create charts and graphs via SVG and transcoding them into PNG files.  However, one of the problems I constantly face is how to determine the exact size of a text string.  For instance, when drawing a legend, I need to know the size of the legend in order to properly size the graph next to it.

How do I solve this problem?  Is there a way to do it directly in SVG?  Is there an API in Batik that I can call to get the width of a string in a given font and size?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Scott

Re: Text size

[Vincent Hardy <vi...@sun.com>]

Scott,

Unfortunately, there is no good way of doing this in SVG right now.
There are some round-about ways of using the SVG-DOM which would 
provide some solution, but Batik does not support that part of the
SVG DOM yet.

I realize this is a disapointing answer. However, there are some tips
to position text:

a. Using text-anchor, you can center a text on a given position.
b. Using text-length, you can force a string of text to fit in a 
   given length. 
c. Using filter effects, you can create boxes around a text area
   if you use object bounding box units.

There are probably other tricks you can use, but these are the ones
from the top of my head. I use a with c. quite a bit and you can see an
example in moonPhases.svg:

<filter id="bgRect" primitiveUnits="objectBoundingBox" x="-.2" y="-.2"
width="1.4" height="1.4" >
  <feFlood flood-color="black" flood-opacity=".5" result="bg"/>
  ...
  <feMerge>
    <feMergeNode in="bg" />
    ...
    <feMergeNode in="SourceGraphic" />
  </feMerge>
</filter>

I hope this helps.
Vincent.

> Scott Moore wrote:
> 
> I'm using Batik directly in a Java program to create charts and graphs
> via SVG and transcoding them into PNG files.  However, one of the
> problems I constantly face is how to determine the exact size of a
> text string.  For instance, when drawing a legend, I need to know the
> size of the legend in order to properly size the graph next to it.
> 
> How do I solve this problem?  Is there a way to do it directly in
> SVG?  Is there an API in Batik that I can call to get the width of a
> string in a given font and size?
> 
> Any help would be much appreciated!
> 
> Scott

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