Insert Text Dialog
==================

.. image:: /images/InsertTxtDlg.png
   :align: right

Generally when designing a font you will not want to use this dialog. What is
the point of a glyph which is made up of precomposed text?

But occasionally it is useful. A company's logo might want to live in a single
glyph.

This dialog looks rather like the :doc:`print dialog <display>`. You may enter
text, display it in a given font, and at a desired pointsize. You may apply
OpenType features.

Once you have composed your text, you may insert it into a glyph. The text will
be insert as the outlines of the characters you entered. In the simplest case,
the text will much as you entered them at the origin of the glyph.

.. image:: /images/TextUnbound.png

The text will be scaled. If you entered the text with a pointsize of 12, then
the outlines will be scaled so that the em-size is 12. If you use a font where
the em-size is 1000, and the character "H" is 662, then after scaling the "H"
will be 12*662/1000 = 7.9 units high.

(You can, of course, rescale the outlines once they are in the glyph).

If you enter a lot of text, it will wrap. The dialog shows the length of the
longest line, and the location at which text will wrap.

Complications arise if you select a path in the glyph before invoking the Insert
Text dialog -- then you can bind the text you enter so that it curves with the
path. You can have FontForge scale your text so that it exactly fits the path
length, or you can position your text at the start, middle or end of the path.
Text is bound so that if the path is a horizontal line running from left to
right the text will use the path as a baseline and be oriented as you would
expect for left to right text, if the path is a horizontal line running right to
left, then the text will appear up-side-down. If you don't want the text to use
the path as its baseline (if you'd like a gap between the two) then enter a
value in "Offset text from path"

Finally FontForge has two modes for binding text. Either it will use the place
where the center of the glyph aligns on the path and rotate the entire glyph
appropriately for that point, or it will distort each bit of the glyph as is
appropriate for where that bit aligns on the path. In the first aproach the
letters are cleaner individually but the text as a whole is more jagged.

.. flex-grid::
  * - .. figure:: /images/PathToBind.png
         
         path
    - .. figure:: /images/TextBoundUnitaryGlyph.png

         Glyphs bound as a unit
    - .. figure:: /images/TextBoundDistortedGlyphs.png

         Glyphs distorted by binding