VARKON Version 1.17 1999-05-07

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VARKON includes a text entity that can be used in 2D as well as 3D. A text is a string of maximum 132 characters with starting position and angle of direction. In MBS it looks like this..

text(id,p1,angle,string:attributes);

p1 is the lower left corner of the first character in the string and angle is the anticlockwise rotation around p1 relative to the X-axis of the active coordinate system. In a DRAWING MODULE (2D) the text is always oriented in the plane of the screen but in a GEOMETRY MODULE a text can be placed in the XY-plane of any coordinate system.

The size, width, slant and font of a text is controlled using attributes. TSIZE controls the height of the text and scales the width accordingly. TWIDTH controls the width scaling factor. TSLANT controls the slanting of individual characters and TFONT sets the basic font to be used. VARKON includes a normal font and a serif font but other fonts can be created using a font editor supplied with the system. Since fonts are continuously scaleable and slantable and can be drawn using any linewidth there is no need for the large number of fonts often found in other systems. A TPMODE attribute can be used to control the display orientation of a text in 3D. With TPMODE=0 the text is alwyays displayed in the plane of the screen, ie. readable in any view. With TPMODE=1 the text is displayed in the plane it was originally created in as a true 3D text.

VARKON uses vector representation for its text. When printed or plotted the boldness of a text will therefore depend on the current penwidth as well as the TFONT and WIDTH attribute.

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