Canvas:Text

Text in Canvas

The <canvas> spec currently lacks any methods for drawing text; this was done to simplify initial implementation.

API

string textStyle;
void drawText(in string textToDraw);
void pathText(in string textToDraw);

Do we need measureText?

textStyle: CSS 2.1 "font" shorthand, e.g. "12pt bold Helvetica". Reading textStyle just returns the last string that was passed in. Defaults to whatever the user's default sans serif font is (maybe serif font? what's the default for text if no font is specified?).

drawText: draws textToDraw relative to the current origin transformation matrix, and fills with the current fillStyle. The current origin is the origin of the text baseline.

pathText: adds the glyphs of the given text to the current path. They can then be stroked/filled/clipped as normal.

• roc: You will be able to create a hidden IFRAME full of properly laid-out text with full CSS styling (plus MathML and whatever else), and draw that to a canvas --- but that won't use canvas fill/stroke.

• vlad: Yeah, I think that's useful as well when you need to create a more complex text layout; but it seems overkill when you just want a simple string. Being able to use stroke/fill is also important (since you can do things like text with a gradient/pattern/etc).

• roc: agree.

• taken: In this case, user can select the texts ? IMHO, mozilla should not increase unselectable text.--Taken 01:53, 4 Mar 2006 (PST)