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Text Tool - Wrap to selection


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In lieu of a licensed copy of Photoshop, I use Paint.NET for my general design brainfarts. I've used it for a few years now and only now have found something I dislike - a lack of word/text wrapping functionality.

So I decided I'd pop in and even remembered my account details on the first go (woohoo! This never happens) and drop a request for this functionality, as much as I hate requesting things in general due to a patholo--moving on. My vision is thus:

Step 1. Enable Word Wrapping (a button up here, assumedly). This would ideally have a dropdown also allowing you to change whether it wraps on whitespace only or mid-word with a hyphen.

Step 2. Make a selection. If there is no selection, it wraps to the image border.

Step 3. Type. When the text hits the right (or left, for right-aligned text, or exceeds the width of the selection/image for center-aligned) it will wrap at the appropriate point. When out of vertical space the text would merely be cut off as it is now.

Bonus points: Make center-aligned text centered relative to the selection. Justified text would also be possible when there are given bounds, but who even uses that? Sheesh.

As it is now, text is based only on an anchor point (and is rasterized only - no editable text is a bearable downside for the gigabyte of memory I save from what I last saw of Photoshop, but that's not saying I don't often want for it), having text based on selection bounds if a selection exists would be a very user-friendly way of making it all much more powerful. I know Paint.NET isn't a word processor but nicer text handling would be a big plus for those of us who use it for more design-oriented purposes. As noted, text being editable objects (I don't much like the 'text layer' thing, but I can't honestly think of a better way) would be cool too.

Watch this space. It will do tricks, sooner or later.

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My personal response to your steps: (I am, in no way, saying that I dislike the idea. I am simply giving my thoughts on this topic)

1. Enabling hyphens would require the addition of a dictionary (or access to one) to paint.net because you can't just place hyphens anywhere in a word when line-wrapping.

2. When making your text, you already specify a position by clicking. Making a selection would be redundant. That said, I propose (if this is ever added) that rather than clicking a single point, a text box is used similar to that in MS PowerPoint.

3. Sounds ok.

I don't recall if Rick ever mentioned if he planned on adding editable text, so as of now, I'd stick with the plugin (and ask the plugin author nicely to add the new features ;) )

No, Paint.NET is not spyware...but, installing it is an IQ test. ~BoltBait

Blend modes are like the filling in your sandwich. It's the filling that can change your experience of the sandwich. ~Ego Eram Reputo

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The plan is, sometime in the lifetime of 4.x, to just go all out and have text layers and layer masks, along with richer text formatting and editing.

Layer masks must be present first, because otherwise there'd be no good way to clip the text (on a text layer) to some arbitrary selection.

The Paint.NET Blog: https://blog.getpaint.net/

Donations are always appreciated! https://www.getpaint.net/donate.html

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