Text Origin Decide-icidal

[Jasoco]

So Top-Left is winning with 94% and a 6% margin of error in its favor.

[Sardtok]

Notice that the 'p' and 'y' extend below the other letters, while the 'l' rises higher than the other letters, yet even the 'l' is too low. Along the x-axis though, everything is properly centered.

You mean the whole string is too low, right?
And that if the problem with using top left as the base instead of the baseline, was ascenders then the l should have been in a different position in this string.
First of all, the l would have been lower if the text was top-left aligned and the l was higher due to an ascender (that is, if this problem existed).

In 0.5.0 it's easy to do a centered baseline, but then the text is a bit too high. And there doesn't seem to be any kind of proper font metrics.

The thing you are interested in is the x height, could be called getXHeight.
getHeight returns the font's ascent (height of ascenders from baseline), should probably have been getAscent, but maybe names shouldn't change. Or set getHeight to return the x height and getAscent to return the ascent.
You already have getLineHeight, but I'm not sure if it reflects the actual line height, since you can set it. (line height = ascent + descent + line gap)
There's also the cap height, which is the height of capital letters from the baseline, as it can be different from the height of ascenders.

Apple has a good resource explaining font metrics in a single simple image:
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/ ... trics.html

[rude]

Thanks, Sardtok. Will probably use that Apple thing when making love.font (in not-so-distant future).

[Robin]

in not-so-distant future

Will that be pre- or post-apocalypse?

[bartbes]

It is planned during the apocalypse.

[Robin]

I think everyone would have enough on their hands already during the apocalypse...

[bartbes]

No, no, we'll just be waiting to die, so if you're going to die with a keyboard in your hands, you might as well code, right?