Rich Text API Details

This page discusses some of the details of the current Rich Text API prototype.

The current prototype adds one (not two) new node to the scene layer.

TextFlow, subclass of Parent. Includes the following properties:

Notes:

1. Font can be set in CSS, even thought it doesn't exist as property in the node, and it is inherit to the children.
2. Font-smoothing, underline, strikethrough, fill won't work the same way since they are not inherit in CSS.
3. The fact that TextFlow does not have a font makes tab expansion wrong (tab is 8 whitespace in which font?), a possible solution for this problem is to added a tab stop list to TextFlow.
4. TextFlow does not have a BoundsType property, it is always logic. Laying out the children using visual bounds doesn't seen to make sense.
5. Line spacing would be easy to add (See RT-21683).
6. Consider change TextFlow to subclass Region instead of Parent New: most likely doing this!
7. What is the best way to handle TextFlow nested in TextFlow?
8. Properties removed (relative to the original proposal): x, y, textOrigin

Alternative names for TextFlow (New: very unlikely the name will change):
Paragraph, TextGroup, TextPane, TextBlock, DIV, TextLayoutPane, RichTextPane.

Instead of adding a new node (e.i Span) we decided to use the existent Text node:
When Text is a child of TextFlow only the following properties are respected:

Plus all the properties in the super classes (Shape & Node)

Note that some of the properties in Text are ignored when it is a child of TextFlow. They are:
x, y, textOrigin, boundsType, wrappingWidth, textAlignment.

Using these new elements a rich text layout can be accomplished using code or markup (FXML), and entirely styled using properties or CSS.
See some examples in Rich Text API Samples.

Relavants FXML bugs for Rich Text:

1. RT-24466 - support load object hierarchy from string
2. RT-24336 - better whitespace handling in the text node