Problem - Lisp Routine Using Textbox Command

I have a lisp routine that draws a balloon (elongated if necessary) around a
single line of text.

Because of the variable nature of text (font style, width, obliquing angle,
etc.), I wanted some means of measuring the length of the user entered
textline so I could accurately calculate whether the balloon needed
elongating, and if so, by how much. I also wanted to pick up the *exact*
centre of the textline (allowing for risers, descenders, font width,
obliquing angle, etc.) and then place the textline exactly centre of the
balloon.

The only way I can find of accurately measuring the textline is to use the
Textbox command.

I initially draw the textline off-screen, apply Textbox and then use the
Textbox returned diagonal coordinates to calculate the length of the
textline (as a distance) and the exact centre of the textline (as a point).
The textline is then moved from its off-screen position to the centre of the
balloon.

Textbox returns its bounding box points (lower left, upper right) as if the
textline's insertion point were located at (0, 0, 0), although this seems to
assume Left justified text and I am using MC justified text. Because of
this, I have to translate the textline 'exact centre' point. At the moment I
achieve this by setting the UCS to the text object and using:

(trans <text-centre-point> 1 0) followed by
(command "UCS" "P")

This translates the point from the current (object) UCS to the World UCS.

I'm not sure if this is the best way to achieve what I want. Also, the
routine will fail if the user is not in the World UCS when the lisp routine
is run.

I thought I might check to see what the current UCS is, but cannot find a
command to give me this information. UCSNAME returns " " when in World.

Can anyone suggest a better way to calculate the 'exact centre' point and
then move the text by that point to the balloon centre, possibly without
using Trans?

Thanks

 

When you extract the text's data using (entget <text-ename>), the tag 11 gives you the exact
coordinate of the text's center point if this text was added in Mid-center justification.

This may help!


mlv a écrit :

 

Thanks for the advice.

The Assoc 11 coordinate is not always the *exact* Mid-Centre of the textline
if, for example, the textstyle has been obliqued. However, it is generally
close enough

At the moment my Lisp routine still calculates the true Middle-Centre of the
textline using the 'Textbox' function coordinates and then applying the
trans function.

I discovered that I could overcome the routine failing if the user is not in
the World UCS when the lisp routine is run by using:

(command "UCS" "Object" <text-entity>)
(setq tmcp (trans <true-middle-centre-point> 1 0))
(command "UCS" "P")
(setq tmcp (trans tmcp 0 1))

Note: tmcp = True Middle-Centre Point

The first trans function translates the text <true-middle-centre-point>
(calculated from the Textbox coordinates) from the Text Object UCS to the
World UCS and saves it to the variable tmcp

The second trans function translates tmcp from the World UCS to User UCS,
in case the World UCS is NOT the current UCS. If the World UCS is in fact
the current UCS, the trans function returns the coordinates unchanged.

It seems to work OK.