How to fit a sentence in a rectangle with the Hershey vectorial font.

via wikipedia: The Hershey fonts are a collection of vector fonts developed circa 1967 by Dr. A. V. Hershey (...). Vector fonts are easily scaled and rotated in two or three dimensions; consequently the Hershey fonts have been widely used in computer graphics and computer-aided design programs.. When programming, I often have to fit a sentence in a rectangle (for example to write the name of a short-read in the graphical view of a BAM) so I wrote a XML version of the hershey font.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<hershey>
  <letter id="1" count="9" left="-5" right="5" char="a">
    <moveto x="0" y="-5"/>
    <lineto x="-4" y="4"/>
    <moveto x="0" y="-5"/>
    <lineto x="4" y="4"/>
    <moveto x="-2" y="1"/>
    <lineto x="2" y="1"/>
  </letter>
  <letter id="2" count="16" left="-5" right="5" char="b">
    <moveto x="-3" y="-5"/>
    <lineto x="-3" y="4"/>
    <moveto x="-3" y="-5"/>
    <lineto x="1" y="-5"/>
    <lineto x="3" y="-4"/>
    <lineto x="3" y="-2"/>
    <lineto x="1" y="-1"/>
    <moveto x="-3" y="-1"/>
    <lineto x="1" y="-1"/>
    <lineto x="3" y="0"/>
    <lineto x="3" y="3"/>

From there, I can generate some bindings
for various programming languages using XSLT, for example javascript:

{
 "1":[{t:'M',x:0,y:-5},{t:'L',x:-4,y:4},{t:'M',x:0,y:-5},{t:'L',x:4,y:4},{t:'M',x:-2,y:1},{t:'L',x:2,y:1}],
 "2":[{t:'M',x:-3,y:-5},{t:'L',x:-3,y:4},{t:'M',x:-3,y:-5},{t:'L',x:1,y:-5},{t:'L',x:3,y:-4},{t:'L',x:3,y:-2},{t:'L',x:1,y:-1},{t:'M',x:-3,y:-1},{t:'L',x:1,y:-1},{t:'L',x:3,y:0},{t:'L',x:3,y:3},{t:'L',x:1,y:4},{t:'L',x:-3,y:4}], ...

In the Javascript example below, I'm generating some random rectangles where a sentence is written:


That's it,
Pierre