I have always found that setting the textfield to autosize = "left" and filling it one letter at a time checking the width at each loop works. Then when it goes over the max width, trim it by one letter and display the field.
Just set the alpha to 0 or something to hide it while you do the loop then set it back to 100 when it is done. This way you can also dynamically control when to show "more" links based on if there is still text left in the "buffer" or original text string that hasn't been sliced and thrown in the field. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ryan Creighton Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2006 11:27 AM To: flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com Subject: [Flashcoders] Determine text overflow Hi folks. Sorry if this issue is old hat - i've been reading through the archives and can't find a solution. i have a dynamic text field set to a certain size (picture a dialogue box at the bottom of an adventure or RPG game). i'm feeding it text. i'd like to determine when the text overflows the box so that i can snip it, save it for later, and display a "more" arrow prompting the user to press SPACE to keep reading. My busted methodology-to-date follows. Thanks for your help. >Ryan Creighton Senior Game Developer, CORUS Interactive >http://www.ytv.com When i did this a few years ago, i manually added a "/" character wherever i thought the text should be snipped, and just split the string into chunks and displayed each chunk on its own. But this game will be translated into a few other languages, and i don't trust the translators to put the delimiter characters in the right places. Besides, it's a testing nightmare in a game with a lot of text. So i built an array of each font character and its width, which i processed through a function that added up all the widths of the characters. When it overflowed, i backed up to the nearest SPACE character and snipped it there, saving the rest of the text for later. The trouble is that when i had Flash tell me the widths of each font character (by filling a text box with each character and measuring them one-by-one), Flash let each letter get kinda roomy, so my width numbers were way too large. So then i hand-measured each character (!!), and my numbers are still too large ... the font crams the letters together pretty tightly depending on which letters are next to each other, so my static width values are no good. Ack! i know there's a solution out there! Does anyone have it? (Thanks!!) _______________________________________________ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com _______________________________________________ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
