Text Layout Framework Overview Redux
You may have heard of the new Text Layout Framework, an ActionScript 3.0 component library that is based on the flash.text.engine package available in Flash Player 10. It first appeared on Adobe Labs last November.
At that time, we posted an overview of the framework that described the library as it existed last fall. Well the engineers have been hard at work improving the framework and have made quite a few changes to it. In fact, there have been enough changes that a new overview would be in order. As it turns out, I've been working on updating the overview, and have a draft of it ready for review. As it is a draft, I'm giving it an expiration date a week out from now, and will replace it with a new draft at that point if there are enough comments and suggestions to warrant a new version.
The updated overview has been incorporated into Chapter 21 of the Programming ActionScript 3.0 book, which is the chapter titled "Working With Text" (I printed only that chapter, so it appears as Chapter 1 in the download file). The last section of the chapter covers the Text Layout Framework. You can use the bookmark labeled "The Text Layout Framework" to get to the section or go directly to page 51.
I have included all of the "Working with text" chapter in the PDF download file so that you can compare the news layout example first done with the TextField class, then with the flash.text.engine package, and finally with the Text Layout Framework.
If you're new to the Text Layout Framework and want to get started with it, first read the updated overview, then go to the Text Layout Framework page for instructions on how to get started with the library.
Once you start using the framework, you'll probably want to have access to the API documentation. The ASDoc output for the framework is available as part of the Flex Gumbo documentation. Just look for the flashx.textLayout.* packages in the Flex Gumbo API Documentation. We'd love to get your feedback on what you like and don't like about the documentation we've done so far, and what you'd most like to see in the future.
To get a sense of what is possible with the Text Layout Framework, check out the latest version of the New York Times Reader 2.0 application, which is built with Adobe AIR and the Text Layout Framework.