Finding the leftmost pixel in a piece of text when using GDI+

[Nathan Sokalski]

I am using GDI+ to generate buttons in my application. Because I want the
left and right edges of the buttons to be a certain number of pixels from
the start and end of the text, I need to know (or be able to calculate) the
left and rightmost pixels of the text. However, this is a problem because
not all letters have their leftmost pixel at the same X position. For
example, when using the following font:

Dim buttonfont As New Font("Arial", 19, FontStyle.Bold, GraphicsUnit.Point)


and using the following lines to draw text:

For i As Integer = 65 To 90

testgraphics.DrawString(Chr(i), buttonfont, Brushes.White, 0, 35 + (i - 64)
* 20)

Next


The characters 'A' and 'J' start 2 pixels farther to the left than most
other characters (there are also a couple other characters that are offset
by 1 or 2 pixels). Is there any easy way to determine what X position the
first and last pixel of a character is at? Because this depends on the font,
the only way to do it manually would be to test each pixel. Is there a
method that can be used to do this? Thanks.

 

[Patrice]

If this is an offline process, testing each column of pixels should be
enough.

You could also try
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/gdi/fontext_52at.asp
and in particular the GLYPHMETRICS structure that should allow to get the
"box" in which the character is drawn...

Patrice

 

[Nathan Sokalski]

Do you know of anywhere where I can see an example? Thanks.

 

[Patrice]

Try around :
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/numerator/test/FontTester/Form1.cs?rev=1.2

I've done a search using gmBlackBoxX (you could use any other name that
belongs to this structure) on Google...

Good luck.