[reportlab-users] stretching fonts

[Tim Roberts]

Carl Karsten wrote:

> Is there a way to make a font, wider?   or make a string take up x

> amount of space?  the string is a constant (well, it will be "2009"

> for the next year...) and I need it to fill up an area that is about

> 1.5x the width it currently uses, without increasing the hight.  and I

> don't want to just increase the spacing, because I like the look of

> the wider font.

>

> This may qualify as "that is changing the font, and so you should just

> use a different font."   maybe.  but I am trying to use a font that is

> pre-installed on ubuntu boxes.


This is easy.  The canvas.scale method can scale isotropically (meaning
different values in X and Y), and it applies to fonts.  However, you
need to remember that after you apply scale, ALL of the X and Y values
get scaled, including the coordinates you supply to drawString.  The
easy way around this is to do something like this:
    canvas.saveState()
    canvas.translate( myX, myY )  # move origin to desired start of string
    canvas.scale( 1.5, 1.0 )   # scale by 150% in X direction only
    canvas.drawString( 0, 0, "2009" )
    canvas.restoreState()

-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.