Question

I’m learning ActionScript/Flash. I love to play with text, and have done a lot of that kind of thing with the superb Java2D API.

One of the things I like to know is “where, exactly, are you drawing that glyph?” The TextField class provides the methods getBounds and getCharBoundaries, but these methods return rectangles that extend far beyond the actual bounds of the whole text object or the individual character, respectively.

var b:Sprite = new Sprite();
b.graphics.lineStyle(1,0xFF0000);
var r:Rectangle = text.getCharBoundaries(4);
r.offset(text.x, text.y);
b.graphics.drawRect(r.x,r.y,r.width,r.height);
addChild(b);

b = new Sprite();
b.graphics.lineStyle(1,0x00FF00);
r = text.getBounds(this);
b.graphics.drawRect(r.x,r.y,r.width,r.height);
addChild(b);

Is there any way to get more precise information about the actual visual bounds of text glyphs in ActionScript?

Answer 1

Not reasonably possible in Flash 9 — Richard’s answer is a clever work-around, though probably completely unsuitable for production code (as he mentions) 🙂

If you have access to Flash 10, check out the new text engine classes, particularly TextLine.