Designing text
I've been trying to design an app with some text and I have some doubts.
On one hand I thought about formatting the text. I know there is a escape sequence that lets you change the text colour, but I know too (If I'm wrong correct me please ;) that there isn't anyway to change other styles as bold, italic... in the same text. So, is there anyway to do this? Anyone has tried to add an existent web browser or anything similar to change the text?
On the other hand I want to change the shape of the box containing the text. I would like to add some images with the text, and if changing format is almost impossible I think adding some images would be completly impossible, so I thought about changing the shape of the text so there is room for a image. Is this possible or the text box may always be a rectangle?
Thanks for your time and patience :)
[878 byte] By [
Zuarkoa] at [2007-11-27 6:41:44]
# 1
> I know there is a escape sequence that lets you change
> the text colour, but I know too (If I'm wrong correct
> me please ;)
Are you sure there is an escape sequence that let's you change the text colour?
I remember back in my DOS programming days that the ANSI.sys driver would let you do things like this, but I'm fairly certain that a platform independent language like Java will not. Have you tried this?
Anyway, as you say, your requirements are beyond simple escape sequences. As you say, some sort of web browser will probably do what you want. There might be free ones on the web, I don't know.
In my opinion the best thing for you to do is to change the shape of the box containing the text is to take a look at the awt layout managers as they can be set up to display your content in a flexible way. Is the position of your images etc fixed or dynamic?
The GridBagLayout manager is the most flexible, but also the most complex (which is why I don't use it unless I have to!). On the other hand nesting multiple BorderLayout manager objects will allow you to position your content with a great degree of accuracy in a simple way.
Hope this helps,
Roger
