Justify text with DrawString right -and- left

Question

Let's say I have 200 pixels of space and I want to draw two strings into it: - the first string should be left justified - right second string should be right justified - But not overlap if they do not both fit (then do whatever my String.Trimming options say)

Am I going to have to measure each and draw this manually, or does DrawString have some way to support what I'm trying to do without me reinventing the wheel?

Imagine that \l and \r were escapes that did this, then I could say

graphics.Drawstring("\lfirst\rsecond", ...);

and I'd wind up with something like

"first              second"

At least that's what I'd like to have happen (I know \l and \r do not exist). Is there a way?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 04 '12 at 22:48

3

I've ignored your flags and instead I'm showing you (roughly) how you can align text. It's easy enough to pick out your text, split it up and draw it as two separate strings!

string text2 = "Use TextFormatFlags and Rectangle objects to"
 + " align text in a rectangle.";

using (Font font2 = new Font("Arial", 12, FontStyle.Bold, GraphicsUnit.Point))
{
    Rectangle rect2 = new Rectangle(150, 10, 130, 140);

    // Create a TextFormatFlags with word wrapping, horizontal center and
    // vertical center specified.
    TextFormatFlags flags = TextFormatFlags.HorizontalLeft |
        TextFormatFlags.VerticalCenter | TextFormatFlags.WordBreak;

    // Draw the text and the surrounding rectangle.
    TextRenderer.DrawText(e.Graphics, text2, font2, rect2, Color.Blue, flags);
    e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rect2);
}

answered Jun 04 '12 at 22:48

Faraday

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Unless I'm missing something, this just draws text in a rectangle. I wound up doing two MeasureString calls and handling it myself, but I don't think your answer has anything to do with the specifics of my question. – Dave Jun 05 '12 at 17:19
1

@Dave - The TextFormatFlags passed in to TextRenderer specifies the justification/alignment (both vertical and horizontal) of the text you want to draw - within the bounding rectangle. It answers the part of your question about justifying text. However, this solution doesn't take care of the possible overlap issue (the other part of your question), so in your case, using MeasureString becomes useful (in conjunction with this solution). – nexus-bytes Feb 26 '13 at 09:00
HorizontalLeft is not a member of TextFormatFlags – Yusuf Apr 16 '19 at 23:05

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 08 '13 at 18:08

In the long run here's what I wound up doing:

Call MeasureString on left string
Call MeasureString on right string
Draw left string, left-justified
If the sum of the width of the two strings is less than width of the available space, draw the right string right-justified.

Pretty straightforward, though I was hoping there was something in the framework that would have done the work for me.

Justify text with DrawString right -and- left

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