Text behavior

• 3 minutes to read

This article describes text-specific behavior settings.

Text placeholders

Sometimes you may want text elements to behave as placeholders. The main difference between placeholder text and regular text items is what happens when they are blank. While a regular text item will be displayed as empty text, an empty placeholder text item will prompt the user to enter text. If the user does not fill a placeholder, this prompt won't be rendered on a print file.

This prompt will be displayed as semi-transparent. Once the user enters text, it will disappear. If they clear the content of the text element, they will see the prompt again.

Text placeholder behavior can be applied to both point and area text. You can do so as follows:

1. Select a text element.
2. On the Behavior tab, expand Name and title, and then enable Make placeholder.
3. Edit the prompt in the Placeholder text.

Note

Text placeholders are typically used for variable elements. See the Variable elements article to learn how to set up variables.

Copyfitting

When you create area text and let the user edit this element, they may type in a string that is too long to fit this area's bounds. By default, when the content does not fit the text element bounds, the part of the text that goes out of the text frame is clipped. However, you can change this behavior.

1. Select one or more area text elements.
2. On the Behavior tab, expand Copyfitting.
3. Define the Overflow strategy and Shrink mode.

Important

These settings are applicable only when a text element has bounds (i.e. area text). It is not available for point text, which always automatically expands its width.

Text Overflow Strategies

• Clip

  Crops text that goes out of the text region. This is the default behavior.

  

• ExpandBox

  Expands the bottom bound of the original text area when the text goes out of this area. After that, if you erase the text, the bounding rectangle remains expanded.

  

• FitToWidth

  Downsizes text to fit the bounding rectangle's width. The text moves to a new line only when the user presses Enter. The following image illustrates how this option looks in the editor.

  

• FitToBox

  Moves text to the next line when the end of the current line is reached and starts to downsize the text only when the bottom of the bounding rectangle is reached.

  

Shrink Modes

In addition to a strategy, you can specify in what way the editor downsizes text that goes out of its bounds. There are two options:

• Size

  Changes the font size. This is the default shrink mode.

  

• Scale

  Disproportionally shrinks text in width:

  

  or height:

  

Text permissions

Similar to Manipulation permissions, you can manage text permissions and define which properties of the text users can personalize. You can do so as follows:

1. Select one or more text elements.
2. Click the Behavior tab.
3. Expand the group of Permissions and scroll to Text.
4. Set up the required properties.

Text formatting

Depending on your personalization scenario, you may want to enable various text formatting settings. Simple formatting options mean that such settings as font settings, color, etc. can be modified for the entire element. An advanced option means that the user can select a part of text and modify formatting only for the selected part of the text. This is called rich text formatting.

To specify whether you want a specific element to use simple formatting or rich text formatting, do the following:

1. Select a design element.
2. Open the Behavior tab.
3. Expand the group of Permissions and scroll to Text.
4. Select a mode in the Text formatting drop-down box.

The following modes are available:

• Default - the behavior will depend on the editor settings.
• Enabled - force rich text formatting.
• Disabled - force simple mode.

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In the next section, you will find instructions on how to add variables to a template.