Xara text export to Flash .swf

[pauland]

I recently tried exporting some single character text fields to flash and noticed something quite odd.

Exporting a single character (say "2") from Xara, whenever I loaded the .swf produced by Xara dynamically into a flash movie, the character is clipped and remains like that until the flash movie is resized. it's not an issue when importing the swf into the flash workbench, only when dynamically loading into a movie. Anyone else seen this?

In the attached image, the red two has been exported from Xara and has it's top clipped on initial draw, but on resize is drawn correctly. The green three was made in flash, and is never clipped (as you might expect). Non-text shapes exported from Xara don't seem to show this problem either.

Any ideas?

Paul

[RickX]

Maybe you first have to convert the text to editable shapes befor exporting them to .swf

[pauland]

Hi Rick, afraid that didn't work, but I do now know how to make it work correctly.

If a single number is created with the text tool, the outline is invisible. Exporting the character with an outline, the problem will occur. Making the outline visible and then exporting, there won't be a problem (just a thickness you don't want).

A better solution is that once the character is created, switch to the selection tool (arrow). Then go Arrange->Combine shapes->Add shapes and voila, no more problem!

I think this is a bug when there's only text fields in the swf. If I add another shape that will overlap the text sufficiently, the problem will go away. If I add a large shape that doesn't overlap the text, the text will still be clipped.

I have never seen this before because I've always surrounded text with other shapes.

Mystery solved. I think it's a bug, fairly unimportant and easy to workaround, but had me tearing my hair out when trying to write my flash code. Arghh!

Paul