Text, styles and fonts

LinceCAD has AutoCAD's two kinds of text: single-line text (TEXT), created with TEXT, and multiline text or paragraph text (MTEXT), created with MTEXT. Both use a text style, which sets the font and its shape, and both are drawn with the real SHX or TrueType fonts, on screen and when plotting.

Single-line text

TEXT asks for the start point, the height and the rotation, and then the contents. Each line you type is a separate text object and the next one is placed below it; Enter on an empty line ends the command.

Specify start point of text or [Justify/Style]:

• Justify chooses which of the 15 points of the text is the insertion point (Left, Center, Right, Middle and the nine combinations of top, middle and bottom).
• Style changes the text style used (? lists them).

Multiline text

MTEXT asks for the two corners of the paragraph box; the width of the box decides where lines wrap. Before the second corner you can change the height, justification, style, rotation and width:

Specify opposite corner or [Height/Justify/Line spacing/Rotation/Style/Width/Columns]:

Then the Text Editor opens, with style, height, justification, width and color, and bold, italic and underline buttons that apply to the selected text. Each line in the editor is a paragraph. AutoCAD's MTEXT formatting codes are honored (font change, height, color, underline, stacked fractions...).

Editing text

Double-click a text, or use TEXTEDIT, to change its contents: a single-line text on the command line itself and an MTEXT in its editor. The PROPERTIES palette also changes the height, style, justification and rotation.

Text styles

STYLE opens the text style manager: create, rename, delete and set current. Each style sets:

The current style is in TEXTSTYLE and the default height in TEXTSIZE. Annotative texts and annotation scales are explained in Dimensions and annotation scales.

Fields

A field is a piece of text that is computed automatically: the date, the file name, the drawing author or title, the user, or a property of an object (the length of a line, the area of a boundary, the layer...). FIELD creates a text with a field or puts it in an existing text.

• Fields are shown on a gray background that is not plotted (FIELDDISPLAY turns it off).
• They are updated when the drawing is opened and saved; UPDATEFIELD updates them at any time, including the date.
• They are saved as in AutoCAD: the fields of an AutoCAD drawing are read and updated, and the other way round.

Find, replace and check spelling

• FIND finds a text and replaces it with another in the whole drawing or in the selection: texts, attributes, dimension texts, multileaders and table cells, matching case and whole words or not.
• SPELL checks those same texts with the dictionary of the interface language (Spanish or English, both included with the program) and suggests corrections; your own words are added to a user dictionary.

Fonts

• SHX: AutoCAD's stroke fonts (shapes 1.0 and 1.1, Unicode and big fonts).
• TrueType: the system fonts (.ttf).

LinceCAD does not ship AutoCAD's own fonts: it looks for them, in this order, in the drawing folder, in AutoCAD's font folders if AutoCAD is installed, and in the system fonts (on Linux, those of fontconfig). If a style's font is missing, it uses simplex.shx, txt.shx or Arial instead, the first one it finds, as AutoCAD does with FONTALT. For a drawing to look the same on another computer, copy its SHX fonts next to the DWG.

Notes

• When a DWG is read, texts are placed as AutoCAD left them; texts from a DXF are justified again.
• MTEXT indents, tabs and columns, text background masks and fields inside the MTEXT editor are not available yet.
• The texts of dimensions, leaders and tables also use text styles.

See also

TEXT · MTEXT · STYLE · Dimensions · Tables