Creating Text - MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING FLASH Use Manual

When you use a movie clip to mask text set in a device font, the rectangular bounding box of the
mask is used as the masking shape. That is, if you create a nonrectangular movie clip mask for
device font text in the Flash authoring environment, the mask that appears in the SWF file takes
the shape of the rectangular bounding box of the mask, not the shape of the mask itself.
You can mask device fonts only by using a movie clip as a mask. You cannot mask device fonts by
using a mask layer on the Stage.
For more information on using a movie clip as a mask, see "Using movie clips as masks" in Using
ActionScript in Flash.

Creating text

You can create three types of text fields: static, dynamic, and input. All text fields
support Unicode.
•
Static text fields display text that doesn't change characters dynamically.
•
Dynamic text fields display dynamically updating text, such as sports scores, stock quotes, or
weather reports.
•
Input text fields allow users to enter text in forms or surveys.
In Flash, you can create horizontal text (with a left-to-right flow) or static vertical text (with
either a right-to-left or left-to-right flow). By default, text is created with horizontal orientation.
You can select preferences to make vertical text the default orientation and to set other options for
vertical text.
You can also create scrolling text fields. See
To create text, you place text blocks on the Stage using the Text tool. When creating static text,
you can place text on a single line that expands as you type, or in a fixed-width block (for
horizontal text) or fixed-height block (for vertical text) that expands and wraps words
automatically. When creating dynamic or input text, you can place text on a single line, or create
a text block with a fixed width and height.
Flash displays a handle on the corner of a text block to identify the type of text block:
•
For static horizontal text that extends, a round handle appears at the upper right corner of the
text block.
•
For static horizontal text with a defined width, a square handle appears at the upper right
corner of the text block.
•
For static vertical text that has right-to-left orientation and extends, a round handle appears at
the lower left corner of the text block.
108 Chapter 6: Working with Text
"Creating scrolling text" on page 128.