Re: string-width error?

[psto@xs4all.nl (Peter Stone)]

>On Wed, 8 Feb 1995, Peter Stone wrote:
>
>> Thanks for advice for everybody. The width problem was endeed caused
>> by string exceeding the build-in Mac OS limit, which was undocumented 
>> in the MCL manual.
>> 
>> Natural-size works fine when the text to be sized contains newlines at 
>> the end of each row. But the string I'm sizing is "a very long string 
>> without newlines". Its width must be calculated in chunks. Here is the 
>> unlimited length version of string-width.
>> 
>
>All string-width really does is multiply the length of the string by
>the char width.  You can do this yourself rather than using string-width
>repeatedly.  (If you are using a variable-width font, either approach will
>give increasingly erroneous results and the length of the string increases.)

If string-width only multiplies the length then the following results
would be the same, so the chunking option gives better approximation.

4 > (string-width "aa.." '("times" 12 :plain))
18
4 > (string-width "aa.a" '("times" 12 :plain))
19

Peter