NAME

Text::Flow - Flexible text flowing and word wrapping for not just ASCII output.

SYNOPSIS

  use Text::Flow;
  
  # use it on ASCII text ...
  my $flow = Text::Flow->new(
      check_height => sub { 
          my $paras = shift; 
          sum(map { scalar @$_ } @$paras) <= 10;
      },
      wrapper => Text::Flow::Wrap->new(
          check_width  => sub { length($_[0]) < 70 }
      ),
  );
  
  my @sections = $flow->flow($text);
  
  # @sections will now be an array of strings, each string 
  # will contain no more than 10 lines of text each of which 
  # will be no longer then 70 characters long
  
  # or use it on text in a PDF file ...
  my $flow = Text::Flow->new(
      check_height => sub { 
          my $paras = shift; 
          (sum(map { scalar @$_ } @$paras) * $pdf->get_font_height) < 200;
      },        
      wrapper => Text::Flow::Wrap->new(
          check_width => sub {
              my $string = shift;
              $pdf->get_string_width($string) < 100
          },
      )
  );
  
  my @sections = $flow->flow($text);
  
  # @sections will now be an array of strings, each string 
  # will contain text which will fit within 200 pts and 
  # each line will be no longer then 100 pts wide

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a flexible way to wrap and flow text for both ASCII and non-ASCII outputs.

METHODS

new (%params)

This constructs the new Text::Flow instance, and accepts parameters for the "wrapper" and "check_height" variables.

wrapper (?$wrapper)

This is the accessor for the internally help Text::Flow::Wrapper instance which is used by Text::Flow to wrap the individual lines.

check_height

This is the accessor for the CODE ref which is used to check the height of the current paragraph. It gets as an argument, an array-ref of paragraphs, each of which is also an array-ref of text lines. The most common usage is shown in the SYNOPSIS above, but you can really do anything you want with them. It is expected to return a Boolean value, true if the height is still okay, and false if the max height has been reached.

flow ($text)

This method preforms the text flowing. It returns an array of strings which can be treated as complete blocks of text. It will handle paragraph breaks and line breaks for you.

TODO

I wanted to write some tests for using this with GD modules as well. I suppose we will have to wait until 0.02 for that.

SIMILAR MODULES

There are a bunch of other text wrapping and flowing modules out there, but they are all meant for use in ASCII outout only. This just didn't work for my needs, so I wrote this one. If you need to wrap ASCII text and want to do it in a much simpler manner then this module provides, then I suggest checking out those modules. This module is specifically made for when those other modules are no longer powerful and flexible enough.

BUGS

All complex software has bugs lurking in it, and this module is no exception. If you find a bug please either email me, or add the bug to cpan-RT.

AUTHOR

Stevan Little <stevan@iinteractive.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2007 by Infinity Interactive, Inc.

<http://www.iinteractive.com>

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.