Is there a way to determine string width (not string length)?

Hi,

I'm trying to create a scrolling feature for a webpage index. I'm trying to find a way to determine the width of a string.

For example, I have two strings with 20 characters:
`WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW`
`iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii`

As you can see the width of the strings are different. Is there a way I can determine the width of a string. I don't care what unit they are measured in, I only want to be able to use a value, and from there I can determine what is to be done.

Doing lots of searching isn't helping as the terms seem to be pretty generic. I did come across something talking about `GetTextMetrics`, but that seems to be for cpp. Is there something equivalent in c?

Any insight is appreciated.

Failing this, it looks like I will have to figure out a lookup table based on character ratios. It looks like the two strings above, uppercase `W` is ~4x bigger than lowercase `i`.

Thanks.

Letter-spacing - Wikipedia
em (typography) - Wikipedia

Tim S.

Hm, can you mention why you'd want to do this? The text "width" you're talking about depends completely on the font the text is written in; for example, on a terminal, the font will most likely be monospaced, so all printable ASCII characters will have the same width.

GetTextMetrics has nothing to do with C++. It's a Windows API function that would appear to do what you want. Is your program a Windows GUI program?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stahta01

Letter-spacing - Wikipedia
em (typography) - Wikipedia

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Ty for the links, the letter spacing doesn't help much but the `em` page helps. I will admit, when I first saw a reference to `em`, I wrote it off as `css` crap, as that is the only context, up until now, I have ever seen `em` mentioned in regards. But this is what I needed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by erikkonstas

Hm, can you mention why you'd want to do this? The text "width" you're talking about depends completely on the font the text is written in; for example, on a terminal, the font will most likely be monospaced, so all printable ASCII characters will have the same width.

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I understand your curiosity, this is a private site that sets the font (it won't ever change). It isn't monospace, as per my original example.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by john.c

GetTextMetrics has nothing to do with C++. It's a Windows API function that would appear to do what you want. Is your program a Windows GUI program?

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I don't program in Windows, nor do I encourage it. I saw this in a cpp file that was apparently using a Windows API.

Looks like the solution is to actually measure the characters used. Determine the average size of characters (which covers ~85% of them), Then adjust the timing based on how many smalls (i j . etc), and how many bigs (W M Q etc). Smalls reduce timing, bigs increase timing. It's not what I wanted, but the end results are the same.

Ty for the replies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by erikkonstas

Hm, can you mention why you'd want to do this? The text "width" you're talking about depends completely on the font the text is written in; for example, on a terminal, the font will most likely be monospaced, so all printable ASCII characters will have the same width.

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Yes. You need to know what font your output device is using.
Standard C has no functions for querying a font, but your platform will. Since getting the width of a string is such a common requirement, there will almost certainly be a function which does this directly. The hard part is often specifying the font.