TextArea to DrawInto graphics object issue

General
1

I would like to draw a textarea directly into a canvas … and I can. But I want to split the text in half in order to draw two columns of text … and I can. But the second column does not begin with the correct character. If I manually move the splitting point back (derived from getting the linenumber and then charater position), I can get it to work but not programmatically.

Working on Windows 10 Pro. Here’s my code:

  dim i, LineNumber, Halfway as integer
  dim txtSize as integer = 10
  
  TextArea1.FontSize = txtSize
  LineNumber = TextArea1.LineNumber(99999) ' set to last line number in TextArea1
  Halfway = Ceiling((LineNumber / 2)) + 1 ' find midpoint
  i = TextArea1.CharacterPosition(Halfway-1) ' find charpos of the first pos on line halfway
  
  TextArea1.Height = Halfway * (txtSize + 2) ' reset TextArea1 height to only half of text
  TextArea1.DrawInto(g, 30, 300) ' Draw that half onto screen
  
  TextArea1.text = TextArea1.text.Middle(i - 25) ' delete first half of text
  TextArea1.DrawInto(g, 300, 300) ' draw latter half of text over a column
2

I’ve narrowed the problem to the .LineNumber method of a textarea and the .CharacterPosition of the same. The results are not correct. I found a bug for LineNumber addressed but it only mentioned the count is wrong if the last line is 2 characters or less in length.

I’m consistently getting LineNumber counts that are less than what the textarea actually displays.

Anyone encountered this?

3

can you use TextShape for painting if your textarea is maybe only plaintext (non RTF)?

4

I found those functions to be more reliable when the string assigned to the TextArea was not UTF-8.

Before assigning the string to the control, try converting it to UTF-16 on macOS or UTF-32 on MS-Windows.

If the user is typing into the TextArea you could possibly copy the re-encoded text into another (hidden) TextArea.

5

I’m still unclear as to why you’re using DrawInto for this. Wouldn’t it be easier just to use DrawString and specify a width?

6

@GregO
DrawString (now DrawText) is great but I don’t know how to make two columns of it from one string. Is there a way to measure the height of a DrawString result that I could then split in two?

@Kevin g

Before assigning the string to the control, try converting it to UTF-16 on macOS or UTF-32 on MS-Windows … If the user is typing into the TextArea you could possibly copy the re-encoded text into another (hidden) TextArea.

This interests me. I will dig into it a bit. There’s no doubt, in my mind at least, that the LineNumber function isn’t accurate as is.

@Marcus R

can you use TextShape for painting if your textarea is maybe only plaintext (non RTF)?

No wordwrap in TextShape.

9

I’ve written my own wordwrap methods which work but they are cumbersome to employ in various settings. DrawString/DrawText does the work but I can’t determine how long a ribbon of text it will create. TextArea also does wordwrap automatically and supposedly has a mechanism for this: LineNumber. But it fails, at least as far as I’ve been able to tell.

10

@Kevin
I tried the convert encoding on the text to no avail. Well, maybe to some avail as it changed the result of the LineNumber/CharacterPosition results … it just didn’t change them correctly.