[reportlab-users] Using bold and italic with a generic TTF

[Andy Robinson]

> both places.  So, they're using the roman font all through this.   To

> draw the italic text, they set a transform matrix for text to draw it

> skewed (using Tm), and then place each character individually.  


I wonder if the individual placing is necessary, or just an artifact of 
their own algorithm? It seems to me that a basic skew would do the job
and would not adjust letter spacing, so metrics would be unaffected 
(except for a fraction of a character at the end of a string).

 > To draw

> bold text, they change the rendering mode to stroke/fill and alter the

> line width.

Even neater.  Never thought of that.


> Now, glossing over the fact that the text rendering code in ReportLab is

> already complicated, this shouldn't be too hard to add.  A suitably

> motivated individual with a week to spare should be able to do it.


Yes, it sparks quite a few ideas.  One could synthesize "fonts" with 
outlines, height and spacing adjustments.  In fact I think that's what 
Acrobat does when it doesn't have the right font files.

It does however involve modelling things in more detail which would be a 
performance hit, at least when it's used.

- Andy