Re: [tlug] CJK Printing with Fixed Width Font

[jep200404 <jep200404@example.com>]

Stephen wrote:

> Again, you'd need to defeat antialiasing, hinting, and things like
> that, and you're not really interested in the width; you're interested
> in the bearing (how far to advance the origin for each character).

Yup. 

Thanks for saying that. 

Of the various options, modifying paps to set the origin for 
each character might be the easiest solution. It would allow 
me to use fonts that are pretty close to fixed width, as is, 
without having to modify them. The remaining interesting issue 
would be figuring out which characters are single-width, 
and which are double-width. For some characters, that depends 
on the font. 

Curt wrote:

> ... I'd rather say, "column N starts at position X"
> rather than count characters. :-)

I hate counting characters also. 
I just insert or delete spaces until things line up. 
I don't have think about numbering columns or positions. 
Also, I don't always align on the left or right: 

  中文:にほんご 
电饭煲:すいはんき 
    稻:イネ/米

电饭煲     1234.56 
稻            1.23 
ガソリン      4.099

Sometimes I do ASCII art for things like network diagrams. 

We haven't even touched on how I document the parsing of sentences. 
I had given up on that because of the printing problem. 

> > There certainly are many ways to line up columns, 
> > from hard tabs characters (with tab stops on the printer)...
> 
> Actually, that sounds like an excellent way to do it, to me. I use this
> quite frequently in my text files.

But each file has different tab stops, 
and in my case, different parts of a single file 
would have the tab stops at different places. 
One has to keep track of where the tab stops are. 
Yuch. 

> Actually, it seemed to me, after reading your previous message, that the
> broader question was not fixed-width text, but lining up columns, 
> which can be done without fixed-width text.

I understand how you came to think that, 
but you have it backwards. 

I want the spacing of printed text to appear the same as 
it does in console windows as I use them. The console windows 
I use show text as fixed-width (or twice that), so that's how 
I need text to print. Although there are many ways of lining 
up columns without using fixed-width (or twice that) text, 
fixed-width (or twice that) text is what I view and want to 
print. 

> BTW, I don't know much about the software you're using, but I had a
> quick look at the library it uses, and it seemed to me I saw something
> about a command to ask it to use monospaced text.

Thanks for that tip. 

Paps default font, Monospace 12, was disappointing, 
so that the library might have a way to _really_ get 
monospaced text is encouraging.