On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 08:36 -0800, Rob McDonald wrote: > On 1/29/07, Lars Clausen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > As I see it, there's two possible situations: Either the text is plain > > text or it's a LaTeX formula (of some kind). The formulas we have no > > chance to fit correctly until a separate LaTeXObject is introduced (which > > could start out as a clone of TextObject) which the MetaPost renderer can > > handle specially. Plain text we actually have a chance to not just > > position right, but also have a reasonable width of -- which is used in > > the diagram, for sizing boxes etc. If we always leave the size to > > LaTeX/MP, the output is 99% guaranteed to be different from what you see > > in Dia. If we give LaTeX/MP the size (width!), any plain text will be > > just as in Dia, but formulas will need fixing. > > For the plain text case: > > Your plan works if you are perfectly exact in calculating the width of > the text. However, if you get a slightly different result from the > text rendered in LaTeX, you will wreak havoc. Lets say you can > predict the text width within 1%. If you use my MetaPost macro to > force the text to fit your estimated width, you will end up with > inconsistent results. Some text, you underpredict its width, so the > macro shrinks it slightly. Some text, you overpredict its width, so > the macro grows it slightly. What you end up with is subtle (random) > variations in the font size throughout the document.
Rather than changing font size (which we have had bad experiences with), can't we just have each text line be fitted in a LaTeX box of the appropriate size? Then we can make use of LaTeX's fine kerning abilities to get the width right, and font size wouldn't suffer. > On the other hand, if you leave things the way they are... You can > use your 1% error estimate of text width within DIA to calculate > position, box size, etc. You can output these diagrams and let > MP/LaTeX handle the text sizing. All text will have exactly the same > (deterministic) font size. However, things like the margins in a box > drawn around text will be subtlety wrong. When I do a flowchart, I > usually pick a box size big enough to surround all of my text. I then > use a consistent box size, even if sometimes it means the margins are > larger than others. So, for me, slight variations in the margins are > unimportant. Unfortunately, 1% is when we're lucky. I've seen many cases of 10% difference or more. I'll show you samples as soon as I get the metapost thing to work. > Of course, for truly complex LaTeX text, we don't have any hope of > calculating the size inside of DIA until we integrate a LaTeX renderer > into DIA in some way. Indeed. -Lars _______________________________________________ Dia-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/faq.html Main page at http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia
