Expanded Text Tool: Outlined Font

The world maps and other overworld maps in many games are often multicoloured. What this means is if you decide to use say red as your font colour to write on the map, half the time the letters will blend into the background. You can run into the same problem even with a mostly black and white map, if you use lots of different colours to differentiate information. What I would love to see is the ability to write in automatically outlined text. Basically just adding a second colour box to the text tool allowing you to keep the outline "transparent" (so, off) or pick a colour that allows you to make text with contrasting outlines, making it all that much easier to read.

Nice idea. I agree about the troubles with labeling maps, due to colors. A workaround technique (not great but it's something, for now) you can use the Shape tool to put a black or white box, then add your text label on top of the box. Also recommend using the last Font choice in the list of fonts you can use here, the bottom font is the most bold and is somewhat italic, so it stands out best for map labels but still sometimes has the problem of overlapping colors that you mentioned.

Running across this problem all the time. Outlined Font is a simple and effective solution, would love to see this added. +1

Was literally just looking for this. +1

This would definitely be super useful. I hope this get some visibility!

+1 this would be amazing, however Gold's solution of an black outlined white box behind black text works amazingly.

Totally agree

+1 /bump

Bump, please implement >:(

3 years old and still such a low hanging fruit :( this got my vote 

The closest thing I have come to a workaround is to put the text in twice, one time black and another time white. But the white just over the black but a little bit more up and to the left. It's effective enough, but having to do it every time and changing it when needed is annoying... +1

+1 on this please. It would make formatting maps so much easier without having to do it in a third party program.

Yes, this would save a ton of time when I set up maps. +1!

I support this Suggestion +1

Still waiting for this feature.

Implementation wise... Another option besides border could be CSS text shadow. Simply a case of adding a new part of the text tool. Maybe a checkbox to enable shadow and then a colour selector for the shadow. We don't really need things like shadow direction and all the other CSS shadow parameters – they wouldn't go amiss if you added them but version 1 could literally just be a central shadow with 0.5rem blur.

This request is 4 years old - seriously, how hard is this to implement? Text on a full-color map is virtually unreadable. As another user said, this is low-hanging fruit!

Even on completely white maps the grid can interfere with reading black text Besides bordered text maybe you could also have automatically boxed text that instead of just text with a border we could also create text with a automatically fitting box with a filled background color.

+1 to this. Low hanging fruit. Massive utility.

I wrote a script for this that automatically duplicates any lines of text that appear in the sandbox, shifts the copy down and to the right by a few pixels, turns it black and tucks it behind the original text.  The "shadow" can be put on the map layer so that it isn't accidentally selected, and it will follow the original text object around if it is moved, deleted or the text is changed.  The results work quite nicely: I'll try to extract it from my mess of interconnected personal API functions and post it in the API section.

Thanks I would like to try your API method, while of course still supporting this Feature Suggestion for Roll20. Ryan said: I'll try to extract it from my mess of interconnected personal API functions and post it in the API section.

+1 Yes please!

While I would also like to see some updates to the font, this is a great idea!

+1 We've been asking for updates to the Text tool for 8 years and have not received them, despite having huge threads of people asking for it. We've asked for text outline options, additional fonts, text box options. I have to pull in a transparent box and resize it behind the text to make it show up properly.&nbsp; Or just make the text in illustrator and export it as a png but that's super annoying.&nbsp;&nbsp; It's silly that nothing has been done for this in 8 years.&nbsp; They even said, 8 years ago, that " The text feature is something that's going to get some overhauling."&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20dev.net/forum/post/12/text-show-up-poorly-on-maps" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20dev.net/forum/post/12/text-show-up-poorly-on-maps</a> This can't be difficult to implement, especially with how big Roll20 is now.&nbsp; Y'all gotta stay competitive, alternative VTT's are racing ahead on almost every front.&nbsp; I love Roll20 but it's becoming harder to convince my players to stay on the platform when so many other programs do everything Roll20 does but better.

+100 I found my way here hoping to find docs explaining how to do this. Astonished to discover that users have been asking for it for eight years but it's still not supported. I just want to be able to put text on maps that is readable and looks tolerable. Literally every D&amp;D map uses black text with a white outline, because it works. Text I add in Roll20 looks like garbage by comparison. Even just having an option to put make the background of the text box a color (any color!) would be an improvement.

Would also like a drop shadow.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Yeah this could be a thing.

All that needs to happen is Roll20 needs a transparency slider on the side, the hex interpreter for canvas already supports RGBA hex example, pick a color, then add an additional '55' on the end - roll 20 really needs to up its game - really need blocking and shadows on text

This would be very helpful.

+1 This. I want to make the text stand out more on my maps

+1, without this labeling maps is a pain.

How is this STILL not a reality?!?&nbsp;

It took them 9 Years to add more fonts, I wonder how many more years it will take them to add this.&nbsp;

The new Fonts are pretty cool, I use Merriwhether font in Roll20 text tool a lot now (for DUNE, and DnD). But it's still the same problem of visibility, contrast. We really still need OUTLINE font, and DROP SHADOW, to avoid the complexity of needing to create a filled-color box shape and layer it underneath the text labels manually!

One day, my friends. One day.

Came for this and Its Jan 2022

Seven years and this still has not been implemented. How hard is it??

This really is one of the worst shortcomings of the tool.&nbsp; If you purchase a supplement for Roll20 that comes with maps, note that the text is always done separately and imported into Roll20 because the native text functionality is lacking.

So, what I ended up having to do is to create the outlined text in Paint 3D (paste black text over light text, but slightly off centered) and import it as an image.&nbsp; I found a free arrow I liked by searching for "arrow" in Tokens within Roll20.

Gonna keep bumping this. We've been asking for this for years and keep getting ignored. This can't be that hard to do. We need legible text!

Hey folks! Just an update: this feature is available in your games now. Closing this thread so you can spend your votes elsewhere!