drawTextInRect improvements

SDK Feature Requests
1

  1. drawTextInRect doesn't have a variation callable directly on the font
    It's a small issue but it's a little odd to have some of the draw functions but not all of them.

  2. drawTextInRect doesn't have a justify option
    Not sure if it's just infeasible, but this would be quite a useful addition for using space effectively on the Playdate

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2

I'm a bit puzzled why developers need to reinvent the wheel with basic text functionality; I've seen a few solutions posted on the forums here, but I'd like to see a draw text function or library that has the following features:

  • Custom Window Size
  • Typewriter On/Off
  • Typewriter Speed
  • Wrap Around Text On/Complete Words/Off
  • Autoscroll Text Up/Down/Off
  • Text Origin Above/Top/Middle/Bottom/Beneath (i.e. terminal behavior, star wars scroll, etc.)
  • Fill to Bottom/Top (i.e. once text fills to the bottom or top of screen, begin scrolling)
  • Page-behavior if scroll disabled
3

Good point. I suppose for symmetry with drawTextAligned() it might indeed make sense to add drawTextInRect() as a method on playdate.graphics.font

Just to note for anyone else reading this, the functionality is already there: the last optional argument in Playdate.graphics.drawTextInRect() is font, which when specified will draw using that font exclusively, rather than the currently-set font and variations.

1 Like