Text and Ink Input and Display

Using Text

Text and Styles

8

Within a paragraph view, text is represented in two slots: the

'text

slot and the

'styles

slot. The

'text

slot contains the sequence of text characters in the

paragraph, including an instance of the

kParaInkChar

placeholder character

(

0xF701

) for each ink word.

The

'styles

slot specifies how each text run is displayed in the paragraph. A

text run is a sequence of characters that are all displayed with the same font
specification. The

'styles

slot consists of an array of alternating length and style

information: one length value and one style specification for each text run. For ink
words, the length value is always

1

, and the style specification is a binary object

that contains the ink data.

For example, consider the paragraph text shown in Figure 8-5.

A paragraph view containing an ink word and text

In the paragraph view shown in Figure 8-5, the

'text

slot contains the following

sequence of Unicode characters:

'T' 'r' 'y' ' ' 0xF701 'o' 'n' 'e'

The

'styles

slot for this paragraph consists of the following array:

styles: [4, 12289, 1, <inkData, length 42>, 4, 12289]

The first pair of values in the array, (

4, 12289

), covers the word "Try" and the

space that follows it. The length value,

4

, specifies that the text run consists of four

characters. The packed integer font specification value

12289

specifies plain,

12-point, New York.

The second pair of values in the array, (

1, inkData

), covers the ink word. The

length value is

1

, which is always the case for ink words. The value

inkData

is a

binary object that contains the compressed data for the handwritten "this" that is
part of the text in the paragraph view. The data is automatically extracted from the
tablet data as part of a preliminary recognition process that precedes word recognition.

The third and final pair of values in the

'styles

slot array,

(4, 12289)

, covers

the word "one" and the space that precedes it. This text run is 4 characters long and
is displayed 12 points high in the plain version of the New York font family.

The packed integer font specification values
are shown in Table 8-6 (page 8-21).