About Text Layout

For the most part, Multideck relies on macOS built-in code to format and present text. But Multideck does have control over how that text should be formatted (e.g. fonts, font sizes and styles, line heights, alignment, etc.) and, importantly, where that text is placed on your card.

This page discusses the details of text placement. You may not need to know all of this, because Multideck's defaults will automatically make your text look nice if the text fits into the allotted space in its card item. But at times you may want to override those defaults, and you will need to understand how your choices affect text layout.

Text Insets and Item Bounds

Every card item has a size and location, which define a rectangle called the item bounds. When you are not in Preview mode, you can see these bounds rectangles for every item on your card layout. Item content is (usually) not drawn outside of the item's bounds—for example, if there is more text than will fit within the bounds, the excess text will be cut off.

For text items (Plain Text, Rich Text, Literal, and cells of Text Tables), the bounds for the text are usually smaller than the item's bounds. This is because Multideck supplies a text inset, a bounding rectangle smaller than the item bounds, and restricts text drawing to this inset rectangle. Although not all text items will have background color, those that do would look bad if their text were jammed up against the edges of the color; the text inset avoids that problem (whether there is background color or not). Multideck's default text inset is 4 points on every side (top, bottom, left, and right).

Text Insets and Margins

Margin is an optional feature that allows you to specify an inset for an item's content. This inset is different from the text inset, and can be applied to all kinds of items, not just text items. It reduces the area in which the item's content appears. For example, with an image item the image usually stretches to the item's bounds; but with a margin, the image will be fit into the smaller inset rectangle specified by the margin.

Tell me more about Margins.

If a text item has a margin, its text is doubly-inset: first by the margin amount, and then again by the text inset amount. This is because margins may be colored differently from the item itself, making a visible border. The double inset means that text is not jammed up against the inside of the visible border.

Custom Text Insets

By default, Multideck uses a text inset of 4 points. You can change this by using the Text Inset control, found in the Text Effects toolbar. You may enter any reasonable value from zero (no inset) on up. Multideck will report an error if you enter a number so large that the inset leaves no room to display the content.

Tell me more about Text Inset control.

Text Insets in Text Tables

Text insets are applied to each cell in a Text Table item in the same way as for Plain Text and the other kinds of text item, but with one difference.

In a table, a cell's content area is defined by its Content WxH values, set in Item Info. By default this is the same as the Cell WxH but you may set the content to use a different size than the cell. Text inset is applied to the Content WxH, not the Cell WxH.

Table items may specify a visible grid, with a settable gridline width. Text layout ignores the visible grid and does not treat it the same way as it does margins. Changing the gridline width does not change the text layout, and it is possible for the text to display over the gridlines. To avoid this, adjust the Content WxH or the Text Inset to suit.

Also note that margins, if used, apply to Text Tables as a whole, and not to individual cells in a table. Margins therefore do not affect the size of cell content areas or the layout of text in Text Tables.

Tell me more about Text Tables.

Legacy Text Layout

Versions of Multideck prior to v3.2.1 behaved differently in how they laid out text, and were not always consistent or correct. This older system is called "Legacy Text Layout". The new system ("Modern Text Layout") is consistent, sensible, and better-behaved, and we recommend its use.

But Modern Layout is different from Legacy Layout, and older documents might not produce good results until they have been updated for Modern Layout. If you have this problem and do not want to take time right away to update your documents, you may still use Legacy Text Layout so that the appearance of your cards does not change.

Tell me more about Legacy Text Layout and how to use it.

What to do if your text doesn't fit

If your text does not fit within the text inset area, some of it will be cut off, and not be visible. Here are several ways to deal with this problem:

Make the item larger
Obviously, larger items have more room for text.

Use a smaller font size
The smaller the font size, the more text can be shown. Doing this will affect the text on every card.

Use the Shrink-to-Fit option
Selecting Shrink in the Text Effects toolbar will tell Multideck to automatically reduce the font size so that all of your text will fit. Doing this will affect each card separately: the text on each card will be shrunk only enough to fit.

Reduce the Text Inset
Use the Text Inset control to specify a smaller text inset, which makes more room for text inside your item.

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