Tk_MeasureChars(3) Tk Library Procedures Tk_MeasureChars(3)
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NAME
Tk_MeasureChars, Tk_TextWidth, Tk_DrawChars, Tk_UnderlineChars - routines to measure and display simple single-line strings.
SYNOPSIS
#include <tk.h>
int
Tk_MeasureChars(tkfont, string, numBytes, maxPixels, flags, lengthPtr)
int
Tk_TextWidth(tkfont, string, numBytes)
Tk_DrawChars(display, drawable, gc, tkfont, string, numBytes, x, y)
Tk_UnderlineChars(display, drawable, gc, tkfont, string, x, y, firstByte, lastByte)
ARGUMENTS
Tk_Font tkfont (in) Token for font in which text is to be drawn or measured. Must have been returned by a previous call to
Tk_GetFont.
const char *string (in) Text to be measured or displayed. Need not be null terminated. Any non-printing meta-characters in the
string (such as tabs, newlines, and other control characters) will be measured or displayed in a plat-
form-dependent manner.
int numBytes (in) The maximum number of bytes to consider when measuring or drawing string. Must be greater than or equal
to 0.
int maxPixels (in) If maxPixels is >= 0, it specifies the longest permissible line length in pixels. Characters from
string are processed only until this many pixels have been covered. If maxPixels is < 0, then the line
length is unbounded and the flags argument is ignored.
int flags (in) Various flag bits OR-ed together: TK_PARTIAL_OK means include a character as long as any part of it fits
in the length given by maxPixels; otherwise, a character must fit completely to be considered.
TK_WHOLE_WORDS means stop on a word boundary, if possible. If TK_AT_LEAST_ONE is set, it means return
at least one character even if no characters could fit in the length given by maxPixels. If
TK_AT_LEAST_ONE is set and TK_WHOLE_WORDS is also set, it means that if not even one word fits on the
line, return the first few letters of the word that did fit; if not even one letter of the word fit,
then the first letter will still be returned.
int *lengthPtr (out) Filled with the number of pixels occupied by the number of characters returned as the result of Tk_Mea-
sureChars.
Display *display (in) Display on which to draw.
Drawable drawable (in) Window or pixmap in which to draw.
GC gc (in) Graphics context for drawing characters. The font selected into this GC must be the same as the tkfont.
int x, y (in) Coordinates at which to place the left edge of the baseline when displaying string.
int firstByte (in) The index of the first byte of the first character to underline in the string. Underlining begins at
the left edge of this character.
int lastByte (in) The index of the first byte of the last character up to which the underline will be drawn. The charac-
ter specified by lastByte will not itself be underlined.
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DESCRIPTION
These routines are for measuring and displaying simple single-font, single-line strings. To measure and display single-font, multi-line,
justified text, refer to the documentation for Tk_ComputeTextLayout. There is no programming interface in the core of Tk that supports
multi-font, multi-line text; support for that behavior must be built on top of simpler layers. Note that the interfaces described here are
byte-oriented not character-oriented, so index values coming from Tcl scripts need to be converted to byte offsets using the Tcl_UtfAtIndex
and related routines.
A glyph is the displayable picture of a letter, number, or some other symbol. Not all character codes in a given font have a glyph. Char-
acters such as tabs, newlines/returns, and control characters that have no glyph are measured and displayed by these procedures in a plat-
form-dependent manner; under X, they are replaced with backslashed escape sequences, while under Windows and Macintosh hollow or solid
boxes may be substituted. Refer to the documentation for Tk_ComputeTextLayout for a programming interface that supports the platform-inde-
pendent expansion of tab characters into columns and newlines/returns into multi-line text.
Tk_MeasureChars is used both to compute the length of a given string and to compute how many characters from a string fit in a given amount
of space. The return value is the number of bytes from string that fit in the space specified by maxPixels subject to the conditions
described by flags. If all characters fit, the return value will be numBytes. *lengthPtr is filled with the computed width, in pixels, of
the portion of the string that was measured. For example, if the return value is 5, then *lengthPtr is filled with the distance between
the left edge of string[0] and the right edge of string[4].
Tk_TextWidth is a wrapper function that provides a simpler interface to the Tk_MeasureChars function. The return value is how much space
in pixels the given string needs.
Tk_DrawChars draws the string at the given location in the given drawable.
Tk_UnderlineChars underlines the given range of characters in the given string. It does not draw the characters (which are assumed to have
been displayed previously by Tk_DrawChars); it just draws the underline. This procedure is used to underline a few characters without hav-
ing to construct an underlined font. To produce natively underlined text, the appropriate underlined font should be constructed and used.
SEE ALSO
font(n), FontId(3)
KEYWORDS
font, measurement
Tk 8.1 Tk_MeasureChars(3)