Here's my problem: during XSLT processing to generate FO instances I need to be able to make a reasonable guess as to the rendered length of a given string so that I can do some simple automatic copy fitting, such as setting the list label width to fit the longest item in a definition list. I know this can't be exact because of variables like kerning and justification, but in the normal case of unjustified, relatively short strings I should be able to get within an Em width of the correct length.
I think I should be able to do this using the font metric support in the current development version of FOP but I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what bits are involved.
If you like contorted XSLT and abysmal performance, just use the metric XML files directly. The content should be fairly obvious.
J.Pietschmann
