Java awt font spacing options

Question

Since the Brazilian government does not have a public API for postal codes, I am trying to reverse engineer the code that correios.com.br uses to generate the image below so I can generate my own images to train the OCR program.

I believe that I have already got almost everything right besides the text spacing and the colors:

I am not interested on the colors now, but the text spacing is really bothering me. For instance, have a look on the 'Ti' in 'Tijuca'. The two letters are really close together in the original image and I can't reproduce this feature. I have already tried to derive the font, setting values to TextAttribute.TRACKING and TextAttribute.KERNING, but it did not work.

Here follows my code:

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.font.TextAttribute;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Hashtable;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class CreateImage {

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int width = 570;
        int height = 120;
        boolean new_image = true;

        BufferedImage img;       

        if (!new_image) {
            try {
                img = ImageIO.read(new File("original.jpg"));                           
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();            
                new_image = true;
                img = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
            }
        } else {
            img = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);         
        }

        Graphics2D g2d = img.createGraphics();
        if (new_image) {
            // white background
            g2d.setPaint(Color.WHITE);
            g2d.fillRect(0, 0, width, height);

            g2d.setPaint(Color.BLACK);
        } else {
            g2d.setPaint(Color.RED);
        }


        Font myfont = new Font("SansSerif", Font.BOLD, 11);      

        /*
        Hashtable<TextAttribute, Float> attributes = new Hashtable<TextAttribute, Float>();
        attributes.put(TextAttribute.TRACKING, new Float(-0.01));
        myfont = myfont.deriveFont(attributes);
        */

        g2d.setFont(myfont);

        g2d.drawString("Logradouro:", 5, 13);
        g2d.drawString("Bairro:", 5, 33);
        g2d.drawString("Localidade / UF:", 5, 53);
        g2d.drawString("CEP:", 5, 73);

        g2d.drawString("Avenida das Américas - de 3979 a 5151 - lado ímpar", 105, 13);
        g2d.drawString("Barra da Tijuca", 105, 33);
        g2d.drawString("Rio de Janeiro/RJ", 105, 53);
        g2d.drawString("22631-004", 105, 73);

        g2d.dispose();      

        File file = new File("clone.jpg");
        try {
            ImageIO.write(img, "jpg", file);

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        System.out.println("clone.jpg file created.");
    }

}

My question is: What are the other options to control how a string is spaced when it's drawn? Do you have any ideas on what the original code may be doing?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I can't really say how to do it properly in Swing, but what you are looking for is in typography called "kerning", so that attribute ought to do something similar.