Beta 1 Release Notes

Updated: November 21, 2008

These release notes document known issues related to the beta version of the Text Layout Framework and the Text Layout Component for Adobe® Flash® CS4 Professional.

Overview
System Requirements
Installation and Setup
General Announcements
New Features
Known Issues
Legal Notices

Overview

The Text Layout Framework is a library built on top of the new text engine in Flash® Player 10 and AIR 1.5. This framework provides support for high quality, typographically rich, flowable text layout with selection, editing, undo, copy-paste, and an XML markup language to dynamically style text. The Text Layout Framework is written in ActionScript 3.0 and does not have a specific dependency on Flash CS4 Professional, Flex or any other framework

The Text Layout Framework is for developers who work in Flash, Flex® Builder™, or other IDEs that support ActionScript. It contains the .swc files that implement the framework and code examples for building custom components.

The Text Layout Flash Component is a proof-of-concept component designed to be used with Flash® CS4 Professional, but is not part of the Flash CS4 Professional release. This component is built using the Text Layout Framework. The MXP also provides a Text Layout panel UI which can be used to visually layout text and access advanced typographic features. We created this UI to test the Text Layout Framework, and it is not in final form. The UI is not intended to indicate any eventual UI within Flash CS4 Professional or future releases.

We encourage you to be as active as possible in reporting any issues that you may find on the Discussion Forum. Please carefully read these release notes, prior to installation. This document contains late-breaking product information, updates, and troubleshooting tips related to this library and its usage with Flash CS4 Professional, Flex®, Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5.

System Requirements

The Text Layout Framework has been tested with Adobe Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5. General system requirements for Flash Player are available on Adobe.com. General system requirements for AIR are available on Adobe.com.

The Text Layout Framework has not been fully tested with Linux builds at this time. We recommend that you test the Text Layout Framework only on the Macintosh or Windows platforms.

The Text Layout Framework Flash component will run within Flash CS4 Professional for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Please refer to the Flash CS4 Professional system requirements for more information on the minimum system requirements.

On Windows® Vista® you need to run the Text Layout Flash Component MXP installer with administrator privileges.

Installation and Setup

Prerelease software may be unstable. While we know of no major issues running these builds on machines where you are currently using previous versions of the required applications, these builds may install new prerelease versions of shared Adobe components. These newer files may overwrite the previous versions and cause conflicts with any installed, released versions of your applications. If you experience problems while running these applications concurrently, please repair or reinstall those applications when done with your testing.

We advise you to save your work frequently and avoid leaving open documents unsaved in any application.

Text Layout Framework ZIP Folder Contents

This archive is for developers that are developing in pure ActionScript or want to create new text components for Flash CS4 Professional or Flex. It contains the SWCs that provide the functionality of the Text Layout Framework such as layout, selection, editing and markup. These components are framework (Flash CS4 or Flex) agnostic but allow you to work in conjunction with Flash CS4 Professional and Flex Gumbo. Once you unzip this file you will see a TextLayoutFramework folder which contains the following files and sub-folders:

Readme.html: Contains links to resources, documentation and examples.
Examples: This folder contains developer focused SDK level implementation examples for Flex and Flash CS4 Professional

ActionScript: Contains ActionScript based example implementations to be used with Flash CS4 Professional or Flex.
Flex: Contains Flex based example implementations
Markup: Contains examples that illustrate how to use the markup to represent and style text.

libs: .swc files for use with Flash CS4 Professional or Flex
License.txt: The license agreement for these components.

Text Layout Component for Flash CS4 ZIP Folder Contents

This archive contains components that enable scrolling, skins, and advanced text editing within Flash CS4 Professional. Once you unzip this file you will see a TextLayoutFlashComponent folder which should contain the following files and sub-folders:

Readme.html: Contains links to resources, documentation and examples.
Text Layout Flash Component MXP File: Installs the Text Layout Flash Component and Text Layout panel UI for use with Flash CS4 Professional. The UI of this panel is not in final form.
Fonts: contains a set of value added fonts that will allow you to test some of the advanced OpenType features and Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai scripts.
License.txt: The license agreement for these components.
Source: Contains the source code for the TextLayout Flash CS4 component (fl.controls.TextLayout) implemented using the Text Layout Framework

Text Layout Component Examples for Flash CS4 ZIP Folder Contents

This archive contains developer oriented examples using the Text Layout Flash Component and Framework for use with Flash CS4 Professional. Once you unzip this file you will see a TextLayoutFlashExamples folder which should contain the following files and sub-folders:

Readme.html: Contains links to resources, documentation and examples.
ActionScript: Contains ActionScript based example implementations to be used with Flash CS4 Professional.
Flash: Contains Flash based example implementations including FLA files for use with Flash CS4 Professional.
Markup: Contains examples that illustrate how to use the markup to represent and style text.
License.txt: The license agreement for these examples.

The Text Layout Flash Component is not included in this archive. See the downloads section for the Text Layout Flash Component.

Font Installation

To help you take advantage of many of the advanced features of Text Layout Flash Component, we have provided a set of OpenType® fonts within the Fonts folder of the Text Layout Flash Component ZIP file. To install these fonts please review the Adobe font installation instructions on Adobe.com.

General Announcements

Please note that the main focus of this prerelease program at this time is on getting early feedback on features/APIs, and on reporting bugs. Performance tuning has not yet been completed on the majority of the components.

The APIs should be considered Beta quality and still under definition. There are likely to be changes at this stage in development.

Note that TextField is unchanged by the introduction of Text Layout Framework and Flash Player 10.

New Features

World Languages

Support for bidirectional text, vertical text and over 30 writing scripts including Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and others.

Rich Typography Controls

OpenType features — kerning, ligatures, typographic case, digit case (oldstyle/lining figures), digit width (proportional/tabular figures)
Tracking
Flexible leading model
Baseline shift
Discretionary hyphens
Margin top and bottom (space before and after)

East Asian Typography

East Asian Justifier
Vertical text
Horizontal text within vertical text –Tate-Chu-Yoko (TCY)

Text Layout

Multiple columns
Text flow through linked containers
Tab stops
Inline graphics — images (png, jpegs), SWFs, or any Flash Player DisplayObject
Hyperlinks

Rendering Support

Transparency
Device and embedded fonts
Anti-aliasing support for embedded fonts
New embedded font format (DefineFont4), which provides improved typography support, international support and reduced font size.

Editing

Selection, editing, cut, copy & paste
Standard keyboard and mouse gestures for editing (ctrl/cmd home/end, double click etc.)
Selection Mode — allows text be treated read– only, read– select or read– write
Undo manager — provides control over undo and redo of edit operations.

Rich Developer API

Text Layout Markup — XML based native format for import and export
Text content model & manipulation API
Measurement & placement — programmatically align objects with composed text
Events – notification of scrolling, edit operations, composition and selection
Edit operations — modify text content model (insert/delete text, change formatting, create links etc.)
Customizable scrolling
Extensible hyperlinks (mouse over and mouse click)
Add adornments on text lines (text highlight, wavy red underline etc.)

Supported Writing Scripts and Layout Technologies

The table below lists writing scripts and layout technologies supported by the new text engine in Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5 which forms the foundation of the Text Layout Framework. Note that "Latin" includes several languages written with the Latin writing system, including English, French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Vietnamese, etc.

Writing Script	OpenType¹	TrueType
Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Tifinagh, Yi, Cherokee, Canadian Syllabics, Deseret, Shavian, Vai, Tagalog, Hanunoo, Buhid, and Tagbanwa.	X	X
Hebrew	X	X
Arabic	X
Thai²	X	Windows PUA definition
Lao	X	N/A
Khmer	X	N/A
Han ideographs and Kana (simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean)	X	X
Hangul Johab³	X	X
Indic (Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya), Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam)⁴	X, Vista interface	N/A
Thaana	X	N/A
Tibetan	X	N/A

¹ By "OpenType," we mean OpenType fonts with a GSUB or GPOS table, implementing the features defined by Microsoft for the corresponding script. By "TrueType," we mean OpenType fonts with neither a GSUB nor a GPOS table (typically these have TrueType outlines). In both cases, the font must have a Unicode cmap sub-table.
² For Thai, the non-OpenType layout is supported for fonts which follow the Windows convention of encoding some glyphs in the Private Use Area (e.g. U+0E0D without its lower part at U+F70F).
³ For Hangul, only the Johab set (aka modern syllables) is supported; the encoding can be either with conjoining jamos (with at most one L, one T and one Vjamo) or with (pre-composed) characters of the Hangul Syllables block.
⁴ For the Indic and Dravidian scripts, Microsoft has used two interfaces between layout engines and OpenType fonts: the older one used in XP and the newer one used in Vista. Only the newer Vista-style interface is supported. It may not be fully documented yet.

Support of a given combination is limited by the actual content of a font. The degree of support for a writing system may vary with the font technology. For example, only a limited set of Latin ligatures are supported with TrueType fonts, while all ligatures defined by the font designer are supported with OpenType fonts. Language support above often requires OpenType Layout tables supported by a font. Note that files with extension .ttf or .otf may contain OpenType Layout tables.

Known Issues

Please note that many features are still in the process of being implemented and many of the issues in the builds are already known to the Quality Assurance teams.

Please review this list before reporting bugs via the prerelease web site.

In general when inserting graphics, if the Image URL specified is to a local file, the path specified must be absolute. If a relative path is used, you will not see the image on the Flash stage or in the published swf. For example:
- This will not work: carrot.png
- This will work: C:/Documents and Settings/fred/Desktop/carrot.png
When inserting graphics on the Windows platform, if the Image URL specifies a local file path, back slashes will not work. For local file paths, forward slashes must be used. For example:
- This will not work: C:\Documents and Settings\fred\Desktop\carrot.png
- This will work: C:/Documents and Settings/fred/Desktop/carrot.png
When inserting graphics on the Macintosh platform, if the Image URL specifies an http file path, (e.g. http://www.mysite.com) the image will not be displayed on the Flash stage (note: it will be displayed in the Text Layout panel and in the published swf).
Align tab doesn’t align multiple lines in Flash Player 10 or Flash CS4 Professional. It appears that if the tab is in its own span, it composes correctly. But if the tab element is a child of a span that also includes text, the tabs are off. (1912241)
Cursor and selection are the wrong color when 3D rotation is applied. The cursor and selection box may appear white instead of the same color as the non 3D rotated text. (1913663)
Text selection is not maintained during motion tween on 3D rotated component. (1913691)
Fonts embedded with Flash CS4 Professional sometimes have changed names, and type using embedded fonts will not display correctly on the Flash Authoring stage or the TextLayout panel (but will display correctly in the published SWF). (1915330)
DefineFont4 is a new embedded font format used by the new text engine in Flash Player 10 providing improved typography, international support and reduced font size. The new text engine does not support any of the previous SWF embedded formats such as DefineFont3 generated by Flash CS3 Professional or Flex 3.You will have to use Flash CS4 Professional or Flex Gumbo to embed fonts using the DefineFont4 format.
Typing Directly on Flash CS4 Professional Stage: Currently you cannot directly type text into the Text Layout text component on the Stage. The closest we have to that functionality is to use the Text Layout panel UI accessed via Window/Other Panel menu in Flash CS4
Test Movie Keystroke Issues: At times Flash CS4 Professional will intercept your keystrokes while doing Test Movie. For example, when you attempt using Ctrl/Cmnd+C to copy an element. To avoid this issue use Debug Movie.
Text Layout panel widgets: Widgets do not convert percentage values to pixel values and vice versa. When changing from percent to pixels, or pixels to percent, you should anticipate entering a new value immediately.
Limitations on Keyboard Input of International Scripts: Some international scripts using Unicode encoding cannot be typed into Flash Player 10 on Macintosh OS or Windows. While all writing scripts supported by Flash Player 10 can be displayed correctly, keyboard input for some of these scripts may not function. Keyboard input will work correctly for several writing scripts including Roman, Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic, and Central European languages on both Windows and Macintosh. On the Windows platform, typing works correctly only for writing scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew or Thai that have Windows codepages.

Known API Issues

StandardFlowComposer.updateContainer() currently calls updateAllContainers. In a future version of the framework it will compose just up to the supplied container.
InlineGraphicElements are not loaded by the factory. When using TextLineFactory.createTextLinesFromTextFlow any inline graphics with source specified by URL will not display as expected.
The InlineGraphicElement ignores textRotation property and is currently not working as expected.
The DisplayObjectContainer controller does not implement IContainerFormat. This is planned work for a future release.
The UndoManager is documented to indicate that one UndoManager can be shared among multiple TextFlows, however this is currently not functioning as expected (1913283).
DisplayObjectContainerController does not implement ContainerFormat setters. Class DisplayObjectContainerController should implement IContainerFormat (1913260). That way one can write:
```
var s:Sprite = new Sprite()

var controller = new DisplayObjectContainerController(s)

textFlow.addController(controller)

controller.columnCount =3 ;
```
Another controller can have different columnCount. This is easily worked around by replacing the above columnCount assignment with:
```
var format:ContainerFormat = new ContainerFormat(controller.containerFormat);

format.columnCount = 3;

controller.containerFormat = format;
```

Flash Player and AIR issues

Undo Shortcut: Keyboard shortcut for Undo does not work in Windows® Internet Explorer® (this is a known Flash Player 10 issue).
Inline IMEs: Many inline input method editors do not currently function with Flash Player 10, especially on the Macintosh platform.
Keyboard Shortcut Handlers: If you define your own handlers for Ctrl-key combinations, be aware that, on the Macintosh, the Flash Player sends both a KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN followed by a TextEvent.TEXT_INPUT event. So, for example, if you have a handler for Ctrl-Z, the KEY_DOWN will be sent, followed by a TEXT_INPUT event of "z". Workarounds are in the Text Layout Framework code to address this situation. However, please be aware of this if you are defining your own handler for Ctrl-key combinations.

Platform Composition Differences

Microsoft Windows: The Compact Font format (CFF OpenType fonts with .otf extension) renderer for Windows can cause some differences between how fonts compose on the Apple Macintosh platform and the Microsoft Windows platform. Through testing we have found that device rendering of non-Adobe fonts (True Type® based fonts shipped with the Windows Operating System) are displayed with better visual spacing than some of the Adobe OpenType fonts provided in this version of the Text Layout Framework components. If you are experiencing what may look on screen like kerning or font spacing problems, try using a similar OS based font on the Windows platform before reporting a problem via the forums.
Macintosh OS: The fonts distributed with the Macintosh OS may not fully support OpenType Layout tables required for international support available in the new text engine in Flash Player 10 used by Text Layout Framework. However many OpenType fonts (.otf) or TrueType (.ttf) fonts support the OpenType Layout tables required for some writing scripts. If you are attempting to work with international scripts you will want to ensure that you are working with a font that supports OpenType Layout tables for the targeted script. See the Supported Writing Scripts and Layout Technologies in the Features section for more information.
Font Embedding: Use the new embedded font format (DefineFont4) to avoid platform specific rendering problems. See the Text Layout Flash Component Overview for instruction on how to embed a font with Flash CS4 Professional. You can also use Flex Gumbo to embed fonts in this new format.

Legal Notices

Big Room Ventures Ltd and Richard Lord

Author: Richard Lord

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Adobe, the Adobe Logo, ActionScript, Flash and Flex are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Macintosh and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. Microsoft Windows, Windows Vista, Windows Internet Explorer and OpenType are a trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linux Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Updated Information/Additional Third Party Code Information available at http://www.adobe.com/go/thirdparty/.