Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:33:58 -0500
From: Francis Boumphrey<[email protected]>
Message-ID:
<CAN1jwS41BvJ-4MDX0vcZW-e_A0WZyzxh6=uzivqstr_bdec...@mail.gmail.com>
FTR, as an implementer, I find maxWidth very useful for the reasons Ian
mentioned
Frank B0umphrey
------
Frank, what do you mean by implementer?
From a developers perspective, I certainly understand that maxWidth saves a few
lines of code;
function scaleDown(ctx, str, maxWidth, font, size) {
while(ctx.measureText(str).width> maxWidth) { size -= 2; ctx.font = size +
'px ' + font; }
// associated fill/stroke if wanted.
}
But that's all it does. It's not implemented widely, it gives the illusion of
being complete. The resulting font size is not exposed to the author and may be
too small to be legible by the viewer. There's no programmatic way to check for
that. Unless you just implement it yourself, in a few lines of code, which is
rather easy to do.
While we could add a ctx.measureText(str, maxWidth) feature, it seems an
unnecessary complication.
If you're using text with Canvas, you ought to be using some smart methods and
considering the minimum font size, and what should be done with the overflow
(such as doing word wrapping).
There's a long history of being conservative with the scope of the Canvas API.
I still do not believe that maxWidth meets the criteria for a necessary
feature. It's very easy to implement it in JS, with the added benefit of having
size data exposed.
-Charles
