CCLabelBMFont has empty space on the top and bottom...how to remove? - iphone

When I generate a CCLabelBMFont object, the font seems to include some leading whitespace on the top and bottom of the characters, and this empty space is included in the font object that I create. Sometimes, I need to position the object precisely by the top and bottom, and this offset ruins my spacing. I want to do is trim the font so that its bounds and content size is only the space in which there are no pixels with an alpha greater than 0.

Using Glyph Designer you can export FNT/PNG files. Although the parameter is not exposed in GlyphDesigner GUI, you can modify (decrease) the lineHeight parameter directly in the FNT file. You can also change the yOffset parameter for every character included in your font.
It makes it a little harder to maintain as those manual changes will be overwritten each time you re-publish with GlyphDesigner, but at least you have a way to adress your problem.
Hope that helps.

You can use a tool like Glyph Designer to set the padding and spacing parameters for your BMFont.
Glyph Designer: http://glyphdesigner.71squared.com

Related

UILabel: Get actual font size with adjustFontSizeToFit

I have two labels in my layout.
I want the font size to adjust to fit the label bounds.
I set to true the UILabel adjustFontSizeToFit.
Moreover a need the two labels to have the same font size. So I added an auto-layout constraint to make the labels have the same size.
The issue with it is the labels do not contain the same string. Sometimes the first is longer and vice-versa. The font I use doesn't have the same width for every character which will not allow me to use a space to fill to shorter string. (This solution looks a bit ugly to me).
I tried to get the label.font.size.pointSize after the label has been displayed but the value returned is always the one I set at the beginning (before being reduced to fit).
Does anyone have an idea on how I could achieve it ?

Text component displaying lines in reverse order

Alright, I do not know how to fix this and only ran into this problem after trying to put in some longer text on a UI Text component. I have tried both pasting a value into its Text attribute through the Unity editor, and setting its value programmatically like this:
t.GetComponent<Text> ().text = "This is where meat, fish, and [...] (long text)"
Because Horizontal wrap is on, the text wraps when it reaches the edge of the available space.
However, the text displays backwards. Meaning, the start of the paragraph is at the bottom, and bottom at the top. Taking off wrap fixes this, but then the font size has to be really small (or it won't all be visible), and it can't form a normal paragraph because it has to... you know... wrap.
Is this a bug in Unity?
This is what happens - as you can see, it is displayed backwards:
The negative Line Spacing value is what is causing the issue here:
When the value of this field is less than 0, the lines will actually be arranged backwards, leading to the behaviour you're currently encountering. Just change the value to a positive number to have the text display correctly.

Word spacing in CoreText

Is there a way to set a custom word spacing in CoreText?
I have looked around the paragraph properties where I would have expected to see this but found nothing.
I don't have deep experience in this but AFAIK you cannot adjust the space between words. So my list of possible solutions would be:
Adjust the kern value, however this will also adjust the space between letter which may not be what you want.
Add extra spaces. Crude, but you can increase the space between words by replace a single space with two.
(Really advanced) start adjusting individual glyphs. The best example I have found for doing is here: http://invasivecode.tumblr.com/core-text about 2/3rds down the author shows how to access the individual glyphs and adjust their settings.

How to set automatically min width of fields by longest text in some group

I use iReport to create reports, and I would like to know if there is a way to set the width of "optically grouped fields". They should be set to the minimal size that still displays longest text. I have Static Text on left side and Text Field right of them. This Text Fields are set to the width 150 and alignment to right, but I'd like to set smaller size to wipe out white spaces.
Consider some thing like this
Name: Paul
Surname: Smither
And want automatically to
Name: Paul
Surname: Smither
etc. can be smaller then preset size but no bigger.
Is there a way?? even some component
You cannot change the element width dynamically without using Java frameworks.
The quote from JasperReports Ultimate Guide:
ELEMENT SIZE
The width and height attributes are mandatory and represent the size
of the report element measured in pixels. Other element stretching
settings may instruct the reporting engine to ignore the specified
element height. Even in this case, the attributes remain mandatory
since even when the height is calculated dynamically, the element will
not be smaller than the originally specified height.
You can read this article for better understanding the mechanism of changing the element size.
If it's genuinely just a couple of fields that come from the same row in the dataset, then you could hack something together.
Use a monospace font
Define your maximum field length with a String set to N spaces. For example:
$P{MaxLengthString} default value is 10 spaces: " "
Change your field text from $F{FirstName} to this:
$P{MaxLengthString}.substring(
$P{MaxLengthString}.length() + $F{FirstName}.length() - java.lang.Math.max($F{FirstName}.length(), $F{LastName}.length())
) + $F{FirstName}
That is... er... a bit more complex. And it only works with monospace fonts. And I can't believe I really suggested this. Don't do it. (But it ought to work.)

Spacing between characters on the iPhone

I have a label and I wish to increase the spacing between characters.
I tried adding a space between each character, but this was too much
Perhaps there is a font with large spacing between the letters?
If all else fails, I am considering putting each character (only a size character code), into its own textbox.
Any ideas on how to achieve this?
There is a way to insert a half space, but I don't recall the exact command (option-spacebar?). Wikipedia has a complete list of spaces you can use.
Another approach would be a UIWebView with the letter-spacing CSS attribute set.
You're better off creating a custom view and using your drawRect routine to draw the text manually. You can use CFAttributedString to hold your text along with kerning information.
Update: sounds like you can't actually use CFAttributedString to draw text on the iPhone. You can still use your drawRect to draw the customized text, but it will take some more work to actually get your custom kerning to work.