ActionScript 3.0 Bible

Chapter 18. Advanced Text Layout

FEATURED CLASSES

• flash.text.engine.*

• flashx.textLayout.*

• flashx.undo.*

The TextField object explored in Chapter 17, "Text, Styles, and Fonts," allows you to place text in your Flash applications. Some applications that deal extensively in text call for a deeper control over text than TextFields can provide. Supplementing, but not replacing TextField, Flash Player 10 adds a whole new text engine, called the Flash Text Engine. This engine provides comprehensive low-level control over the presentation of text. In addition, an open source framework built on this engine is provided: the Text Layout Framework. This framework lets you easily include print-quality text and layout tools in your application.

The new text engine provides functionality for letting text flow through connected text blocks like a prepress publishing tool, including columns and pages. It allows for the insertion of graphical elements into text, including text-wrapping options. It gives you the ability to lay out text vertically and include horizontal text within vertical text. It also provides higher levels of typographical control, over ligatures, digit case, kerning, hyphens, and so on. In this chapter you'll see all the specific applications of this toolkit, which are too numerous to list here.

Note

FP10. The Flash Text Engine is available only in Flash Player 10 and later, as is the Text Layout Framework. I cover these technologies here, so this entire chapter is specific to Flash ...