NAME

PS_show_boxed — Output text in a box

SYNOPSIS

#include <pslib.h>

int PS_show_boxed(PSDoc *psdoc, char *text, float left, float bottom, float width, float height, const char *hmode, const char *feature)

DESCRIPTION

Outputs a text in a given box. The lower left corner of the box is at (left, bottom). If the height is set to 0.0 the box will become as tall as needed to contain all the text. If feature is set to blind no text will be output but the is set as usual. This can for example be used to calculate the box height needed to comprise all text or in order to determine how much text fits into a box.

Line breaks will be inserted where needed. Multiple spaces are treated as one. Tabulators are treated as spaces. The parameter hmode can be "justify", "fulljustify", "right", "left", or "center". The difference of "justify" and "fulljustify" just affects the last line of the box. In fulljustify mode the last line will be left and right justified unless this is also the last line of paragraph. In justify mode it will always be left justified.

The text will be hyphenated if the parameter "hyphenation" is set to "true" and the parameter "hyphendict" contains a valid filename for a hyphenation file. The line spacing is taken from the value "leading". Paragraphs can be separated by an empty line just like in TeX. If the value "parindent" is set to value > 0.0 then the first n lines will be indented. The number of indented lines is set by the parameter "numindentlines". In order to prevent indenting of the first m paragraphs set the value "parindentskip" to a positive number.

USED PARAMETERS

The output of PS_show_boxed can be configured with several parameters and values which must be set with either PS_set_parameter(3) or PS_set_value(3). Beside the parameters and values which affect text output the following parameters and values are evaluated.

leading (value): Distance between baselines of two consecutive lines.
linebreak (parameter): Set to "true" if you want a carrige return to start a new line instead of treating it as a space. Defaults to "false".
parbreak (parameter): Set to "true" if you want a carrige return on a single line to start a new paragraph instead of treating it as a space. Defaults to "true".
hyphenation (parameter): Set to "true" in order to turn hyphenation on. This requires a dictionary to be set with the parameter "hyphendict". Defaults to "false".
hyphendict (parameter): Filename of the dictionary used for hyphenation pattern (see below).
hyphenminchar (value): The number of chars which must at least be left over before or after the hyphen. This implies that only words of at least two times this value will be hyphenated. The default value is three. Setting a value of zero will result in the default value.
parindent (value): Set the amount of space in pixel for indenting the first m lines of a paragraph. m can be set with the value "numindentlines".
parskip (value): Set the amount of extra space in pixel between paragraphs. Defaults to 0 which will result in a normal line distance.
numindentlines (value): Number of lines from the start of the paragraph which will be indented. Defaults to 1.
parindentskip (value): Number of paragraphs in the box whose first lines will not be indented. This defaults to 0. This is useful for paragraphs right after a section heading or text being continued in a second box. In both case one would set this to 1.
linenumbermode (parameter): Set how lines are to be numbered. Possible values are "box" for numbering lines in the whole box or "paragraph" to number lines within each paragraph.
linenumberspace (value): The space for the column left of the numbered line containing the line number. The line number will be right justified into this column. Defaults to 20.
linenumbersep (value): The space between the column with line numbers and the line itself. Defaults to 5.

HYPHENATION

Text is hyphenated if the parameter "hyphenation" is set to true and a valid hyphenation dictory is set. pslib does not ship its own hyphenation dictionary but uses one from openoffice, scribus or koffice. You can find their dictionaries for different languages in one of the following directories if the software is installed: /usr/share/apps/koffice/hyphdicts/, /usr/lib/scribus/dicts/, or /usr/lib/openoffice/share/dict/ooo/. Currently scribus appears to have the most complete hyphenation dictionaries.

RETURN VALUE

Number of charactes that could not be written. This function will also set the value "boxheight" to the actual height of the box. This enables you to put several boxed beneath each other and keep the propper line spacing.

AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Uwe Steinmann <uwe@steinmann.cx>.