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theFormat.blockIndent

Description

The integer blockIndent property specifies the distance a paragraph is indented from the text field's left border, in pixels. Paragraphs are spans of text separated by line characters specified in code (\n, <BR>, or newline). To set the indentation for an entire text field, invoke TextField.setTextFormat( ) without specifying any index arguments:

this.createTextField("theField_txt", 1, 0, 0, 200, 60);
theField_txt.border = true;
theField_txt.text = "This is paragraph one.\nThis is paragraph two."
// Create a TextFormat object
format = new TextFormat();
format.blockIndent = 30;
// Block-indent the whole field
theField_txt.setTextFormat(format);

To set the indentation for the first paragraph in a text field, apply the format to the character at index 0:

theField_txt.setTextFormat(0, format);

To set the indentation for any subsequent paragraphs, apply the format to the character immediately following the newline character:

// Indent the second paragraph
theField_txt.setTextFormat(23, format);

To set the indentation for a range of paragraphs, apply the format using start and end index arguments that include the desired paragraphs:

theField_txt.setTextFormat(0, 24, format);

If any paragraph wraps to the next line, the specified format range must include the subsequent line's first character; otherwise, the format will not apply to the wrapped line.

If automatic word-wrapping is disabled for a text field, large values for blockIndent can force text to overflow the text field's right border. If word-wrapping is enabled, large values for blockIndent cause lines to wrap. The blockIndent and leftMargin properties are cumulative; for example, if leftMargin is 15 and blockIndent for a paragraph is 10, that paragraph will be indented a total of 25 pixels. Hence, the leftMargin property can be thought of as a field layout tool, while blockIndent can be thought of as a paragraph layout tool.

The default blockIndent value (as contained in the TextFormat object returned by TextField.getTextFormat( )) for a text field that contains text is 0. For a text field without any text, the blockIndent value is null. For a completely new TextFormat object, it is also null, indicating that blockIndent will not be set when the format is applied to a text field:

trace(anyUnformattedField_txt.getTextFormat().blockIndent);  // Displays: 0
var format = new TextFormat();
trace(format.blockIndent);                                   // Displays: "null"

See Also

TextField.wordWrap, TextFormat.align, TextFormat.indent, TextFormat.leftMargin, TextFormat.rightMargin

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