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Most objects within a CHILI document inherit from ? Document Object Model - DocumentBase. These objects are totally under CHILI's own control. To leverage Flex's unmatched the text rendering capabilities, however, we have chosen to implement some basic Flex objects within our object model. The most important is the "TextFlow" object, containing the description of a running text and its formatting.

While this is used as the basic object for running texts, it is not a "pure" TextFlow implementation:

• Not all properties of

  Flex's

  TextFlow are supported within the context of CHILI documents

• A large amount of additional functionalities have been built around the basic text editing capabilities

Lower on this page you can find a list of the supported properties (both basic and CHILI-extended). In addition to that, TextFrames, ViewPreferences, Story Editor and many more objects contain more settings to influence text editing within those contexts.

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The three main uses for TextFlow objects in XML are:

• On a

  ?

  Document Object Model - TextFrame object:

  • textFlow

    propertydisplayTextFlow

    property

• On a

  ?Document Object Model -

  FormattedText Variable

  object

  :

  • the "value" property can contain a string representing a TextFlow

See ? TextFrame XML and ? Variables XML for more information.

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A TextFlow Object consists of XML describing the text and its formatting. It should contain at a minimum the following content:

<TextFlow
   xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/textLayout/2008"
   whiteSpaceCollapse="preserve"
   >
   <p><span>SOME TEXT</span></p>
</TextFlow>

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Basic formatting
The formatting of each individual span can inherit values from the paragraph. Note that a span does NOT inherit values from a previous span (although this would be enforced internally if the user edits text formatting through the Editor which creates a new span)

<TextFlow
   xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/textLayout/2008"
   whiteSpaceCollapse="preserve"
   >
   <p fontSize="10"><span fontSize="15">15 points, </span><span>10 points, from paragraph</span><span fontSize="20">20 points</span></p>
</TextFlow>

...

Each span node can also contain "br" or "tab" nodes to indicate soft returns and tabs within the paragraph:

<TextFlow
   xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/textLayout/2008"
   whiteSpaceCollapse="preserve"
   >
   <p><span>SOME<tab/>TEXT<br/>Across multiple lines</span></p>
</TextFlow>

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Paragraph and span nodes can contain any custom attribute as well. While these objects do not inherit from DocumentBase (and therefore can't have a "privateData" sub-node, any attribute not recognized during parsing will be maintained:

<TextFlow
   xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/textLayout/2008"
   whiteSpaceCollapse="preserve"
   >
   <p MY_PROP_1="aaa"><span MY_PROP_2="bbb">Some Text</span></p>
</TextFlow>

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This object is mainly used as a placeholder for the various formatting options which are TextFlow specific (non-CHILI objects) of Character and Paragraph Styles. In both cases, a "format" property exists, which holds the various supported properties:

<document>
  <paragraphStyles>
    <item id="123-456-789" name="MY_FIRST_PAR_STYLE" applyToNewFrames="true">
      <format fontFamily="Arial_Regular" fontSize="15" />
    </item>
 </paragraphStyles>
  <characterStyles>
    <item id="567-890-123" name="MY_FIRST_CHAR_STYLE" >
      <format fontFamily="Arial_Bold" fontSize="25" />
    </item>
 </characterStyles>
</document>

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Similarly, some property values may appear in other locations (eg: "fontFamily" might also be present in a paragraph node). While this would pose less of an issue, it is recommended to only apply them on the locations marked relevant below.

See ?Fonts XML for more details on referencing fonts.

A color inside a TextFlow consists of two separate attributes:

• my_color: the ID of the CHILI color (in document/colors ), which can be CMYK, RGB, LAB, ...

• color: the "TextFlow" value, which in XML can be either a hex value ("#FF0000") or a uint (0x12345). Google can help you convert hex to uint (and vice versa) in your development environment, if needed. This hex/uint value is the RGB representation of the color, used for display within the editor

Note that setting references to CHILI Objects inside a TextFlow XML in itself is not always enough (currently) to also enforce the application of the various properties/settings of that referenced object. When setting my_color, my_characterStyle or my_paragraphStyle, the safest bet is to also apply the relevant applied settings of those liked objects (the "color" uint/hex value, and the various paragraph/character style format settings).

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For internal purposes, and for use through the JavaScript API, there is a helper CHILI object which encapsulates most of the supported text properties (and where you can find some more documentation): ?Document Object Model - TextFormat. This object is however NOT used to serialize/deserialize XML. So several differences exist:

• color/characterStyle/paragraphStyle/font can internally be set using CHILI object references, whereas that is NOT the case in XML (except using the matching "my_XXX" properties, as documented higher)

• various properties in TextFormat are of type "unit", whereas in a TextFlow or TextLayoutFormat, they are numeric (point) values. CHILI internally translates those values. See ?General XML Concepts and ?Measurement Units for more information on how you can perform these calculations yourself

• textDecoration does not exist, but is replaced by a "underLine" boolean property