[texhax] Character bounding boxes

[Hartmut Henkel]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Ranjith Unnikrishnan wrote:

> Following the above procedure would give me the dimensions that each
> character requires *in isolation*. Working with my previous example,
> if my text is $y = x ^2$, I want the coordinates (not the dimensions!)
> of the bounding boxes of the individual characters ("y", "=", etc.) as
> they would occur when rendered within the whole $y=x^2$ string.

if you have a little fun of hacking, the actually easiest and most
straightforward way seems to be adding print statements for page
coordinates (cur_h, cur_v) to the pdftex engine just at the few places
where glyphs and other stuff (rules etc.) are put on the page.

Regards, Hartmut