Text

When Text is selected the area to the right displays the Text Options.  This contains a tab selection area and sample text display.

When the Align tab is selected, 3 radio buttons to select left, center or right horizontal justification of the text within the rectangle are available.  On some versions there are also 3 buttons which allow the text to be aligned to the top, middle, or bottom of the rectangle.

 

When the Rotation tab is selected, a Rotation settings determine if the text will be displayed vertically or horizontally in the rectangle.  If Auto is selected, then rotation is determined by the aspect ratio of the rectangle.  If it wider than it is tall, text will be displayed horizontally.  If not, it will be displayed vertically.

The Font tab shows a Font button that brings up a standard font selection dialog from which the various characteristics of the font to be used can be chosen.  If the Background check box under Rectangle Color is unchecked, the rectangle in which the text is placed will have no background color.  As a result, the text will appear directly over whatever happens to be behind it.  This allows text to be placed directly over bitmaps or bitmap backgrounds, for example.  The Color button allows the text color to be fine-tuned.  The Font button allows selection of 16 standard colors.  If finer control of color is required, after setting up the font, select the Color button and choose the desired color.  Note that, if you select a color other than one of the standard 16 and then reselect the Font button, the color will revert to black and will need to be reset with the Color button.

The Other tab shows controls for automatic font size selection and suppress of blank lines.  When the Auto Font Size check box is checked, the font size will be automatically reduced, if needed, to ensure that the specific text will fit into the given rectangle.  This means that the font size may change from badge to badge as the amount of text to display changes.  Under extreme circumstances the font may reduce to the point that the text will display on more than one line.

If the Suppress Blank Lines check box is checked, then any lines in a multi-line text box will not be output if they are empty.  Leading spaces are always suppressed, so a line containing only spaces will not be displayed if this is checked.

At the bottom of the dialog is a sample window showing the current font in the current text and background colors.  The text is also positioned in the box according to the justification button settings.  The background color is that set by the Rectangle Color background color.  If the associated check box is not checked then text will be displayed over whatever is behind it.  This condition is indicated by the sample window being cross-hatched.  If the font is invisible then the text and background colors are set the same.  Change one or other to rectify this situation. 

Text rectangles support multiple lines of text.  If the box is made tall enough more than one line of text can be displayed.  All lines will be justified according to the justification setting for the rectangle.  Lines will be broken at spaces wherever possible or at specifically entered points.  For more information on this see Assigning Data to a Holder.