Overview

We want to improve text handling in general and allow more advanced visual effects.
The goal is to be able to do the effects common in presentation programs and a simple ebook reader entirely in QML.

Current thoughts

We want to separate the layout process from the visual Text element.

• a TextLayout QML or JS object would do the layout (possibly in a separate thread) and provide an imperative JS API to manipulate the different elements of the text (paragraphs, lines, words, characters).
• the Text element would become a simple view of a TextLayout.

Status

A TextLayout takes some text and a width and layouts the text accordingly.

TextLayout {
    id: textLayout
    text: "..."
    width: 450
}

A Text element can refer to the layout and display the text.

Text {
    layout: textLayout
    color: "white"
}

It is possible to get a list of line elements (currently QObjects) through JS and set properties on them (currently x, y, color).

for (var i = 0; i < textLayout.lineCount; ++i)
{
    var line = textLayout.lineAt(i);
    line.x = i * 10
    line.y = 25
    line.color = "red"
}