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text wrapping in text box?

February 07 (4 years ago)
Jacek
Marketplace Creator

I found a thread from EIGHT years ago where someone mentions lack of text wrapping in text box placed on GM layer. This still isn't a thing or is this really hard to do?

February 11 (4 years ago)
Jacek
Marketplace Creator

Sorry - are you referring to actual Roll20 GM layer or MS Word?

February 11 (4 years ago)
Oosh
Sheet Author
API Scripter

I think that's a bot. Looks like they've got the font size right now, anyway. Beep boop!

Text and rectangles are completely different objects on the canvas - there's no way to do this automatically. It could possibly be achieved with an API script, no idea what can be manipulated with the text objects as I've never looked.

Anyway, a couple of simple solutions:

1) Draw a rectangle where you want the text. Now switch to the text tool and click where you want to start typing. When you get to the end of the box, hit enter to wrap to the next line. Hit enter a few more times to create more lines... the first line of text has probably disappeared, you'll need to hit the up arrow to get it to scroll back into the box. I don't know why this happens, and it is annoying. I don't think you can stop the text from snapping to grid, either, so keep that in mind when drawing the bounding box.


2) If it's not something you need to update and you want it to look nice, you can write it in word or something and just drag it on as a token. You can even output it to a suitable template in chat and do a quick screengrab to keep it all themed (e.g. for 5e &{template:npcaction}{{rname=Room 2B}}{{description=The roof collapses, all the players die. DM wins again.}} <=== send it to chat, screengrab it then throw it on the GM layer.)

February 11 (4 years ago)
Jacek
Marketplace Creator

I'm surprised that such basic feature is after eight years still ignored. 

February 11 (4 years ago)
Oosh
Sheet Author
API Scripter

It just doesn't seem to be on many people's radar. I think most GM's use handouts to store text, and refer to it by way of tokens on the GM layer. It's pretty rare to see that much text on the canvas, as it looks awful and conveying a meaningful amount of information for every room on a map is going to leave the DM struggling to see the actual map.

I've only really seen the text tool used to scribble brief notes, usually by players.