Can you boil the code down to something we can try working on, with a sample text?
There is this block of code that can help you auto-resize text (by changing the font size) by running tests on the text block to see if it will fit in the allotted space:
https://developer.coronalabs.com/code/text-wrapper-class
It works great in iOS, but works less great on Android devices. I took some of the code and made a smaller function that does most of the same thing and it works better on Android:
function sizeText(t, w, h, fontname, fontsizeMin, fontsizeMax, increment) local tempGroup local tempHeight fontsize = fontsizeMax while 1 do tempGroup = display.newText(t, 0, display.pixelHeight + 20, w, 0, fontname, fontsize) tempHeight = tempGroup.height tempGroup:removeSelf() if ( tempHeight \< h ) or ( fontsize - increment \< fontsizeMin ) then break else fontsize = fontsize - increment end end return fontsize end
It will return the font size that you should use for the specified font to get it to fit in the designated space.
So the usage would be:
categoryFontSize = sizeText(categoryString, 740, 70, "Courier", 58, 64, 1) playerCategoryText = display.newText(categoryString, 0, 0, 740, 70, "Courier", categoryFontSize )
That would run through and see if the font size could be as large as 64 and still fit in the allotted width, and if not, keep shrinking the font size by 1, until it gets to the largest number (58 and over) that fits.
Not sure if that will help you or not, but thought I would pass it on.
@thedog
Thanks for sharing the code, but it’s not going to solve my problem. The max number of texts can be displayed varies among actual devices. So I cannot limit a “fixed” area first and also I want to maintain the same font size (my app is a RSS reader app).
I have submitted a feature request for this:
If you ever would encounter the situation that long texts will be displayed in your app, you may consider to give it some votes. If I can get the error, I can show something else to the user to create a better UI experience. Otherwise, for now, I don’t know the texts cannot be displayed & Corona create a long & empty space.
And from my testing, iPhone 5S can display many more texts than a Galaxy Tab 3 8-inch. This difference is also the main reason that I cannot set a fixed maximum texts to be displayed.
Thanks.
You can get the max texture size supported by the device using
system.getInfo(“maxTextureSize”)
Then with a little trial and error you can probably figure out how much text will fit on any particular size texture and then break up your text into multiple objects so each section is always a bit smaller than that max size.
Or, more simply, you could figure out how much text will fit on the device with the smallest max texture size and then break up the text on all devices in exactly the same way to always fit that small texture, piecing them all together in exactly the same way on every device. Sure, some devices won’t be using their particular maximum texture size to display the text, but so what?
In terms of alignment of each text block, you might be able to use the object.contentBounds table on a text object to find where the text ends and then insert the next object a fixed distance below that.
I always hate when this is suggested to “workaround” other text issues, but have you thought of getting the text and writing it to a local HTML file and then using WebView to display it instead of display.newText()?
Honestly, can’t say that I have ever considered doing that or have any knowledge on how it would actually work. But it seems like it might address the issue you are having since my understanding was that WebView didn’t create an image of the text and therefore wouldn’t be limited by texture size.
@thedog
I have replied about using webView to display long texts in my earlier post since horacebury also mentioned about using webView.
Here is my reply again:
I did try with webView to load a local file to display some info. However, it’s not as fast as using the native display objects. Even the data is from a local file, there is still a slight delay.
Besides, webView is always on top, it’s going to have a big headache for me to do other UI (such as menus). This is the main reason I can never use webView to render my screen.
For more additional information, my app is a RSS-type of reader app. I do have a webView to display web pages, however when I want to display some summary texts, I don’t think webView fits my case.
Sorry, I did read that earlier and had forgotten when I posted that last message. It’s late. 
Frankly, you are basically fighting the content vs resources fight. At some point you need to relent and find a work around. In this case, you are working with the mobile phone equivalent of an old copy of PhotoShop trying to edit a 10000x10000 image - sometimes the memory provided by the system just won’t let you do it.
The specific resource in this case is video memory, because the text returned by the newText function is actually an image, not text.
(1) Let’s say after calculation, the first block contains 100 characters (words). After displaying the first 100 characters(words), where to put the 101st character (word)? a new line? how to maintain the original paragraphs/formats?
(2) If there is texture limitation, all texts can be displayed in a single scrollView by breaking up the text?
I am not trying to fight the resource problem and it’s ok I cannot display long text due to memory limitation. I am not trying to get a workaround to display long text either.
However, I just want Corona to return some error indication when the text is too long to be displayed so that I can show something else to the user. (for example, a clickable hyper link)