Referencing Text Anchor

[Lingwisyer]

Hi all,

Is there a way to reference a text anchor?

eg. I have variable length text anchored on point 7 and I want to put something defined by a (sub)routine after it based on where the text ended, anchor 9.

eg2. I have a editable text box that I want to offset a square from.


Ling.

[Barry Kelly · Accepted solution]

If it is a text block then you can request width and height after you have defined the textblock.

REQUEST ("TEXTBLOCK_INFO", textblock_name, width, height)

If it is just text then you can use STRLEN to get the length.

STRLEN (string_expression)

Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

I seem to only be able to get a return of "2" from:

TEXTBLOCK "papersize" 0, 7, 0, 1, 1, 0, "Hello"
x2 = REQUEST ("TEXTBLOCK_INFO", "papersize", width)

Regardless of the text defined by "papersize". Both width and height return "2".


Ling.

[Barry Kelly]

The command is not for either width or height.
You must request both at the same time.

x2 = REQUEST ("TEXTBLOCK_INFO", "papersize", width, height)

Does that make any difference?

Barry.

[Lingwisyer]

I get "4" instead

[Barry Kelly]

Ah - it is not the "X2" value that you want to use.
The sizes are actually put in the height and width variables.
So it is those that you need to use.

You may need to convert to mm or m depending on how you set up your textblock.
I use a fixed_height parameter of '1' in my textblock and I do this when I use height and width to convert them to a usable dimension to suit the current scale.

height*(A_/1000)

[Lingwisyer]

Ah. Was wondering how it worked since it returns multiple variables. All good now.

So why is there a need to use it as a definition? In this case, "x2" becomes a dead variable...

[Barry Kelly]

'X2' (or the 'return value') just contains a value to say if the request is successful or not.
0 means not successful.
It will return a number of successful results - depending on the request itself.
Not sure why this gives 4 - I would have thought 2.
I don't think it is explained well in the GDL guide that you need to use this return value when using a REQUEST command.
Anyway it doesn't really matter as it is the actual requested values that you want.

Quite often you will see ...
Dummy=Request(.......)

Barry.