Algorithm for estimating text width based on contents

Question

This is a long shot, but does anyone know of an algorithm for estimating and categorising text width (for a variable width font) based on its contents?

For example, I\'d

Answer 1

There is no reliable server side solution for calculating width of text. (outside of creating an image of the text and probably SVG)

If you try a tool out like browser-shots and run it against relatively basic pages, you'll immediately see why. It's hard to predict how wide even the most mundane examples will turn out, much less if a user decides to zoom in the browser etc...

It's not stated precisely you might want to truncate the string (it might be helpful in giving potential solutions), but a common one is because you want to cut off the text at some point and provide an ellipse.

This can be done reliably on many browser platforms by using a css property, and NO javascript:

http://www.jide.fr/emulate-text-overflowellipsis-in-firefox-with-css

Answer 2

This is actually an attempt to build some smarts into a string truncation method [...]

Is it really worth the effort? We had this exact problem. And this was across languages. The fix was to leave it as-is. The complexity of keeping this intelligence up increases rapidly (and probably exponentially) with every language that you add support for. Hence our decision.

[...] an algorithm for estimating and categorising text width (for a variable width font) based on its contents?

Most font-libraries will give you this information. But this is pretty low-level stuff. The basic idea is to pass in a string and get back the width in points.