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How To Predict Absolute Width of Text String?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg30351] How To Predict Absolute Width of Text String?
• From: rml27 at cornell.edu (Ronnen Levinson)
• Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 03:40:16 -0400 (EDT)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Hi.

Is there any easy way in Mathematica 4 to determine the absolute width (in,
say, points) of a text string in a given variable-width font and point
size? In other words, I'd like to know the dimensions of the text's
bounding box.

The idea here is that I have some frame labels that need to be no
longer than, say, 3", and I'd like to automatically adjust the point
size to make them fit. I don't have enough space to use a mono-width
font like Courier.

I can make a rough guess that the width of the bounding box is a * p *
n, where p = point size, n = StringLength, and 0< a < 1, but I don't
know how to calculate a without working out the width of each
character in the string, which is more work than I'd looking for.

Yours truly,

Ronnen Levinson.