Dotnet: How do you get the average character width for a font?

Question

Windows Forms:

For System.Drawingthere is a way to get the font height.

Font font = new Font("Arial", 10 , FontStyle.Regular);
float fontHeight = font.GetHeight(); 

But how do you get other textual metrics like average character width?

Answer 1

Use the Graphics.MeasureString Method

private void MeasureStringMin(PaintEventArgs e)
{

    // Set up string.
    string measureString = "Measure String";
    Font stringFont = new Font("Arial", 16);

    // Measure string.
    SizeF stringSize = new SizeF();
    stringSize = e.Graphics.MeasureString(measureString, stringFont);

    // Draw rectangle representing size of string.
    e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(new Pen(Color.Red, 1), 0.0F, 0.0F, stringSize.Width, stringSize.Height);

    // Draw string to screen.
    e.Graphics.DrawString(measureString, stringFont, Brushes.Black, new PointF(0, 0));
}

Answer 2

There is no strictly average font width, since kerning can have an effect depending on what letters are before and after any letter.

If you want to use the non-fixed-size fonts used in the fixed-width script, your main option is to whiten the characters across the width of the uppercase “W” character.

, , , - :

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

// Using the typical printable range
for(char i=32;i<127;i++)
{
    sb.Append(i);
} 

string printableChars = sb.ToString();

// Choose your font
Font stringFont = new Font("Arial", 16);

// Now pass printableChars into MeasureString
SizeF stringSize = new SizeF();
stringSize = e.Graphics.MeasureString(printableChars, stringFont);

// Work out average width of printable characters
double average = stringSize.Width / (double) printableChars.Length;

Answer 3

, . - , "i" "l", , ASCII .

Answer 4

.

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Answer 5

.NET. Graphics.MeasureString TextRenderer.MeasureString.