Autofit Text to Frame

[kleu]

I'm not entirely certain if this has already been covered in another thread, but I'm sorely missing the ability to automatically have text resized to fit the frame.

This feature does exist in the PagePlus program, so I'm hopeful it's just yet to be implemented?

As a side note, the closest reference I have been able to find to this type of feature in the Affinity forums is resizing the frame to the text, which was in an old feature request for the Designer beta. Needless to say, this is rather the opposite of what I would like to happen.

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

[Dave Harris]

We're aware of the need, but it's not high priority for the first Publisher release.

[kleu]

Thanks for the follow up. I'm quite impressed with both the overall beta and forum interactions, and look forward to all the new features and improvements you're working on putting in.

Not quite on topic, but would it be wise to assume a roadmap of potential feature additions won't be generally available until after the first public release?

[MoiraH]

I'm trying to switch from PagePlus to Affiniity and finding it hard going. The Autofit text to frame is an essential feature for me. I see it was not deemed high priority in 2018. Noooooo! Perhaps it's been added by now, but I can't find it....... Please help, it's very frustrating when the frame keeps changing size/shape while I'm trying to make the text fit into it. Can anyone enlighten me as to how to go about it without the "auto" feature, please.

[Joachim_L]

Why is the text frame changing size/shape while typing? The Text Frame Tool makes a box which does not change. Overflowing text will be shown / not shown depending on the option in the Text Frame panel. The Artistic Text Tool is autoexpanding / autofit.

You can sortof autofit even the Text Frame by clicking on the top / bottom / left / right handles. Top / bottom works best, but left / right might lead to unwanted results.

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

You can sortof autofit even the Text Frame by clicking on the top / bottom / left / right handles. Top / bottom works best, but left / right might lead to unwanted results.

That’s the wrong way around, Joachim! What @MoiraH wants to do is not to fit the frame to the text, as you’ve described, but to fit the text to the frame; i.e. automatically adjust the point size of any typed or pasted text so that it fills the frame.

[Joachim_L]

Sorry for misunderstanding the initial question.

[Alfred]

Just now, Joachim_L said:

Sorry for misunderstanding the initial question.

No worries! It’s an easy mistake to make, especially if you haven’t had the benefit of experiencing the capabilities that PagePlus acquired over thirty years of development.

[MoiraH]

I want to do exactly what is described by Kleu at the start of this topic. I want the frame to be fixed and be able to automatically adjust the text size so that it fits exactly to the fixed size/shape frame/s. Clicking the handles and blue dot right bottom changes the frame, not the text.

[MoiraH]

Thanks Alfred. I'm missing PagePlus, I don't know why they decided to supersede it with a less feature-rich product.

[kleu]

Hi @MoiraH, thanks for reassuring me that others still want this feature! Hopefully they'll get around to implementing it soon rather than later, but I do have to admit that I do enjoy the StudioLink functionality they implemented in the Affinity suite.

Now, as to your question regarding workarounds, I have two that sorta work in a bodge-like fashion:

• For single lines of text (i.e., titling or shaping to fit finite characters on a single line to a certain area), Artistic Text gets the job done. To avoid distortion, lock the aspect ratio before changing the size parameters in Transform palette).
• For paragraphs of text, I tend to rely on the fact that you can change the font size by scrolling over the font size field in the toolbar. So, set the text frame size to what you want it to be, then adjust the font as necessary to desired size without overflowing by scrolling up/down to increase/decrease the size. (I think this works with linked frames as well, though I haven't done that recently.)

While these aren't quite as automated as the AutoFit Frame option in PagePlus, it works well enough to not be a complete blocker.

Hope this helps you out.

[MoiraH]

Thanks Kleu. I'll keep at it and hope they introduce an autofit function soon.

[Catshill]

I have just had to Mailmerge 144 beers from a spreadsheet to A4 sheets of paper that are fixed to the end of the cask.

I would have been flummoxed without the ability to fit the text into the frame so I use Microsoft Publisher.

 

Beer Ends.pdf