Beginning in Flash Professional CS5, you can add text to a FLA file using a new text engine called the Text Layout Framework (TLF). TLF supports a wider array of rich text layout features and fine control of text attributes. TLF text allows greater control of text than the previous text engine, now called Classic text.
TLF text provides the following enhancements over Classic text:
- Additional character styles, including leading, ligatures, highlight color, underline, strikethrough, case, digit case, and more.
- Additional paragraph styles, including multi-column support with gutter width, last line justification options, margins, indents, paragraph spacing, and container padding values.
- Control of additional Asian text attributes, including Tate Chu Yoko, Mojikumi, Kinsoku Shori Type, and Leading model.
- You can apply attributes such as 3D Rotation, Color Effects, and Blend Modes to TLF text without placing it in a movie clip symbol.
- Text can flow across multiple text containers. These containers are called threaded or linked text containers.
- The ability to create right-to-left text for Arabic and Hebrew scripts.
- Support for bi-directional text, where right-to-left text can contain elements of left-to-right text. This is important for embedding English words or Arabic numerals within Arabic/Hebrew text, for example.
When creating text, it is important to understand the following fundamentals of working with text in Flash:
- TLF text is the default text type in Flash Professional CS5.
- There are 2 types of TLF text containers, point text and area text. A point text container’s size depends solely on the text it contains. An area text container’s size is independent of the amount of text it contains. Point text is the default. To change a point text container to area text, resize it with the selection tool or double-click the small circle at the bottom-right corner of the container bounding box.
- TLF text requires that ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Player 10 or higher are specified in the publish settings of your FLA file. For more information see Publish settings.
- When using TLF text, the Property inspector has three display modes, depending on the current type of text selection:
- Text tool mode; when the Text tool has been selected in the Tools panel and no text is selected in the Flash document.
- Text object mode; when an entire text block is selected on the Stage.
- Text edit mode; when a text block is being edited.
- You can create three types of text block with TLF text, depending on how you want the text to behave at runtime:
- Read Only: when published as SWF file, the text cannot be selected or edited.
- Selectable: when published as SWF file, the text is selectable and can be copied to the clipboard, but is not editable. This setting is the default for TLF text.
- Editable: when published as SWF file, text is selectable and can be edited.
- Unlike Classic text, TLF text does not support PostScript Type 1 fonts. TLF supports only OpenType and TrueType fonts. When working with TLF text, PostScript fonts are not available in the Text > Font menu. Note that if you apply a PostScript Type 1 font to a TLF text object using one of the other font menus, Flash substitutes the _sans device font instead. When working with Classic text, all installed PostScript fonts are available in the Font menus.
- TLF text requires a specific ActionScript library to be available to Flash Player at runtime. If this library is not already present on the playback computer, Flash Player automatically downloads it. For more information about the library.
- TLF text cannot be used as a mask. To create a mask with text, use Classic text.
The Text Layout Framework delivers multi-lingual, print-quality typography for the web, including support for:
- Bidirectional text, vertical text and over 30 writing systems including Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Lao, the major writing systems of India, and others
- Selection, editing and flowing text across multiple columns and linked containers, and around inline images
- Vertical text, Tate-Chu-Yoko (horizontal within vertical text) and justifier for East Asian typography
- Rich typographical controls, including kerning, ligatures, typographic case, digit case, digit width and discretionary hyphens
- Cut, copy, paste, undo and standard keyboard and mouse gestures for editing
- Rich developer APIs to manipulate text content, layout, markup and create custom text components
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March 10, 2011 at 7:26 am
Hi, Please let me know how to write Right to Left for Arabic. Also tell me the setting regarding to this.
Thank you