Question

Detecting text wrapping

Asked by: brettr

Is there a way to detect when text is wrapping in a DIV?  I'm mainly interested to know the number of words on the second to last and last lines of content in a DIV.  For example:

This is line 1 and now
wraps to line 2 which
goes to the last line of
content.

If the above was in a DIV, it would be wrapping because of the DIV width.  Somehow, I'd like to know the word count on the second to last and last lines.  Is there some way of getting that info?

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Asked On
2007-11-02 at 21:56:26ID22936361
Tags

text

,

detect

,

wrap

Topics

JavaScript

,

Regular Expressions

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
17

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Answers

 

by: nizsmoPosted on 2007-11-02 at 22:15:31ID: 20206023

Theoratically, you can write a function/formula which calculates this, based upon the width of your div compared with the length of your string/sentence/content.

If the whol word gets wrapped (instead of partial word) then you can go about doing something like this as an idea:


we can use the substr() method in javascript, and go to the last character of the first line, which is determined by the "width", and detect if the next character is a space, if not then we keep rolling back to the previous character until a space is encountered, then we know the div will wrap from there (since it wraps the whole word).

We can then go from there and repeat the step for the second line (since now we know where the second line begins) and repeat until you get to the third and fourth line which is what you are wanting.

Hope this gives a a kind of idea on how to do it with javascript. I'm not sure if there's an easier way of going about doing this.

 

by: basicinstinctPosted on 2007-11-02 at 23:02:22ID: 20206082

I'd say it can't be done in a reliable way.

I don't think nizsmo's will work because this "go to the last character of the first line, which is determined by the "width"" assumes that the width is measured in characters, but it is measured in pixels.  You would have to do some calculations on how many pixels in a character, but tath wouldn't work because most fonts aren't fixed width (ie different characters are different widths).

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-02 at 23:05:15ID: 20206085

Yes - that's the problem.  Also, substr will chop off the first x characters.  Not sure what good that does.

 

by: nizsmoPosted on 2007-11-02 at 23:25:30ID: 20206105

agreed there's no reliable way of doing this. The formula (if you really wanted to do this) will then have to take into account what characters and their widths, then how many of them can fit into the div width.
But this will be too complicated, and probably not necessary. Different browsers also will render a little bit differently, so this may also cause trouble.

Notice I said "theoratically" in my first post, in theory it could be done(taken into account everything basicinstinct has said) but it would proably not worth the hassle and the time.

Just a suggestion which came into mind :)

 

by: basicinstinctPosted on 2007-11-02 at 23:34:20ID: 20206118

well, i give up.
here's my progress it's about 80% of the way there.
posting it here in case you feel motivated to build on it and finish it off.
honestly, i think whatever you are doing can most probably be done in some way much easier.

<html>
<head>
    <script type="text/javascript">
           function getFullWidth(el)
      {
            var tmp = el.cloneNode(true);
            tmp.style.visibility = 'hidden';
            document.body.appendChild(tmp);
            var fullWidth = tmp.offsetWidth;
            document.body.removeChild(tmp);
            return fullWidth;
      }
      
      function checkWrapped(el)
      {
            var kid = el.childNodes[0];
            var actualWidth = kid.offsetWidth;
            var fullWidth = getFullWidth(kid);
            var wraps = Math.ceil(fullWidth/ actualWidth);
            guessWraps(kid.firstChild, wraps);
      }
      
      function guessWraps(tn, wraps)
      {
            var arr = new Array(wraps);
            var len = tn.length;
            var charsPerLine = len / wraps;
            var s = tn.nodeValue;
            for(var i=0; i<arr.length; i++)
            {
                  arr[i] = s.substr((charsPerLine * i), charsPerLine);
            }
            alert("It might look like this:\n" + arr.join("\n"));
      }
    </script>

</head>
<body onload="checkWrapped(document.getElementById('test'));">
<div id="test" style="width:100px"><span>This is line 1 and now wraps to line 2 which goes to the last line of content.</span>
</div>
</body>
</html>

 

by: devicPosted on 2007-11-03 at 05:26:43ID: 20206645

here is some idea, tested only with IE7
========================
<div id=myDiv style="width:130px;">
This is line 1 and now
wraps to line 2 which
goes to the last line of
content.
</div>

<script>
function countIt()
{
      var div = document.getElementById("myDiv");
      var arr = div.innerText.split(" ");
      div.innerHTML = "";
      for(var i=0; i<arr.length; i++)
      {
            var sp = document.createElement("span");
            sp.innerHTML = arr[i]+ " ";
            div.appendChild(sp);
      }
      
      var spans = div.getElementsByTagName("span");
      var rows = [];
      rows[0] = "";
      var j = 0;
      for(var i=0; i<spans.length; i++)
      {
            if(i<spans.length-1 && spans[i+1].offsetTop != spans[i].offsetTop)
            {
                  rows[++j] = "";
            }
            rows[j] += spans[i].innerText;
      }
      
      
      for(var i=0; i<rows.length; i++)
      {
            alert("row: " + (i+1) + "\n___________\n\n" + rows[i]);
      }
}
</script>

<button onclick="document.getElementById('myDiv').style.width='130px'"> set width 130</button>
<button onclick="document.getElementById('myDiv').style.width='50px'"> set width 50</button>
<hr>
<button onclick="countIt()">Count it</button>

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-03 at 12:36:23ID: 20207921

@devic

That's pretty good.  Not working for Firefox but I haven't gotten in depth with it yet.

Why are you creating the "span" element, adding it to the original div and then counting items in "span"?  It looks like you are creating a box within the original div and using that to count against.

 

by: devicPosted on 2007-11-03 at 20:55:09ID: 20209347

Yes I put them in spans and  check offsetTop position, if the next span has another offsetTop it means it's a new line. It's just my idea, maybe it can be done with a better way.

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-03 at 21:51:17ID: 20209591

So it is a bunch of elements stacked on top of each other in a DIV?

If the next element doesn't have an offsetTop, what does that mean?  It looks as though you created just enough elements for the text.

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-03 at 23:03:47ID: 20209697

Nevermind - I see how it works.  Neat :)

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-03 at 23:06:32ID: 20209701

It looks like that in some cases, the SPAN might be taking up some space of its own.  This causes a word to get pushed down to the next line.  That then starts down a slippery slope where the effect is multiplied with more text.  Finally, you might end up with the last line off by six words.

 

by: basicinstinctPosted on 2007-11-04 at 01:30:37ID: 20209903

IMHO - whatever you are trying to accomplish, you are going teh wrong way about it...
maybe you could explain here what the problem is... so far we only know the (wrong?) solution you are trying to implement...

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-05 at 08:06:29ID: 20217065

devic's approach should work fine.  One last thing, if there is HTML in the div, how do I keep the HTML but wrap each word in a span tag?  Just as you are doing now but then leave any HTML as is.  I want the HTML to affect the text in each span.

 

by: devicPosted on 2007-11-05 at 08:45:05ID: 20217373

simple save current html to a variable and then restore it. But if you have there more formating (like <br>, marging, padding etc.) then it would not work as expected. It's not an easy task.

================================================
<div id=myDiv style="width:130px;">
This is <b>line 1</b> and now
wraps to <span style="color:red">line</span> 2 which
goes to the last line of
content.
</div>

<script>
function countIt()
{
      var div = document.getElementById("myDiv");
      var html = div.innerHTML;
      var arr = div.innerText.split(" ");
      div.innerHTML = "";
      for(var i=0; i<arr.length; i++)
      {
            var sp = document.createElement("span");
            sp.innerHTML = arr[i]+ " ";
            div.appendChild(sp);
      }
      
      var spans = div.getElementsByTagName("span");
      var rows = [];
      rows[0] = "";
      var j = 0;
      for(var i=0; i<spans.length; i++)
      {
            if(i<spans.length-1 && spans[i+1].offsetTop != spans[i].offsetTop)
            {
                  rows[++j] = "";
            }
            rows[j] += spans[i].innerText;
      }
      
      
      for(var i=0; i<rows.length; i++)
      {
            alert("row: " + (i+1) + "\n___________\n\n" + rows[i]);
      }
      div.innerHTML = html;
}
</script>

<button onclick="document.getElementById('myDiv').style.width='130px'"> set width 130</button>
<button onclick="document.getElementById('myDiv').style.width='50px'"> set width 50</button>
<hr>
<button onclick="countIt()">Count it</button>

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-05 at 08:58:13ID: 20217497

I guess that wasn't clear.  If you restore the original HTML, you're loosing all of the spans.  You're getting innerText and counting rows of off it.   I want the original HTML and the spans put back into the div, not just the original HTML.

 

by: devicPosted on 2007-11-05 at 09:06:37ID: 20217572

sorry brettr, there too much work

 

by: brettrPosted on 2007-11-05 at 09:23:59ID: 20217708

Thanks.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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