User Guide

106 Chapter 6: Working with Text
You can break text apart and reshape its characters. For additional text-handling capabilities, you
can manipulate text in FreeHand and import the FreeHand file into Flash, or export the file from
FreeHand as a SWF file. See “Breaking text apart” on page 120.
Flash documents can use Type 1 PostScript fonts, TrueType, and bitmap fonts (Macintosh only).
You can check spelling by copying text to the Clipboard using the Movie Explorer and pasting the
text into an external text editor. See “Using the Movie Explorer” on page 28.
You can preserve rich text formatting in text fields, using HTML tags and attributes. See
“Preserving rich text formatting” on page 121.
When you use HTML text for the content of a dynamic or input text field, you can flow the text
around an image, including a SWF or JPG file or a movie clip. See “Using HTML-formatted
text” in Using ActionScript in Flash.
You can use ActionScript to format input and dynamic text, and to create scrolling text fields.
ActionScript has events for dynamic and input text fields that you can capture and use to trigger
scripts. For information on using ActionScript to control text, see Chapter 9, “Working with
Text ,” in Using ActionScript in Flash.
For an interactive introduction to creating text in Flash, select Help > How Do > Basic Flash >
Add Static, Input, and Dynamic Text.
This chapter contains the following sections:
About Unicode text encoding in Flash applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
About font outlines and device fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Creating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Creating scrolling text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Setting text attributes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Creating font symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Editing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Checking spelling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
About transforming text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Using Timeline effects with text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Breaking text apart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Linking text to a URL (horizontal text only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Preserving rich text formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Substituting missing fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Controlling text with ActionScript. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Creating scrolling text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128