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Align text in vertical center of text box on mac

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
July 12, 2009
18 replies
27869 views

I am having a problem with my text alignment and I can't figure out a way to correct this. Unfortunately, I'm using a mac with CS3 and a Windows computer with CS4, so it could either be an OS difference, a version difference, or a software bug which I can't figure out.

Update: I downloaded a trial CS4 and the problem persists. This seems to be a mac issue.

For some reason, the text on my Mac with CS3 are not in the vertical center of the text fields. This causes a problem with my "align vertical centers" alignments, meaning I've had to do the alignment by hand to get it to look right. When I moved my file to my laptop to keep working on my project at home, I noticed that the text alignment was correct on my laptop, causing all of the text placement throughout my document to be off. This means that I can only work on the one computer and can't bring the project home to work through the weekends.

I have made an image showing the difference of how the text is aligned on the two versions, and a sample of how it affects my project when i bring it between computers.

I made the file on the mac (CS3) first, and so the alignment is designed to look correct on there. When i bring it to the PC (CS4) the text shifts down, placing it back in the center of the text boxes and ruining the alignment.

When I publish the file it keeps the formatting of each system. IE - publishing on the mac makes the final product look like it does on the mac, and publishing on the windows computer makes it look like it looks on the windows computer. The file published from the mac has the mac alignment on both computers, and the file published from the pc has the alignment of the pc on both computers.

Just to clarify, the way flash handles text fields on windows / cs4 is how I imagine it should be. I made the file on mac/CS3 however, and so when i said "ruins the alignment" I should have said "fixes the alignment problem, but breaks my alignment which was made to compensate for the problem I was experiencing."

I hope that someone will be able to help me with this issue, and thank you in advance for your feedback!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer OMA2k

For people still suffering this problem, you can use this to convert text fields placement from Windows to Mac and vice-versa:

GitHub - TheGood/ShiftTextFields: Allows all TextField instances within a FLA to be shifted along the X or Y axis by N p…

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NinaBos

Participant

The only thing I've found on Adobe forums is formatting via Actionscript 3.0.

Are you working in CS4 at all? I'm in CS3 but curious as to whether it still happens in CS4...

S

Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

Does anyone have any ideas about this? Are there any official Adobe people on this forum? Is this just a problem with Flash on macs?

R

Rothrock

Inspiring

Use a Mac all the time. The text aligns where it aligns. That is how it works. There is no other way than the way it is.

Yes, it isn't ideal that it doesn't like up the same way and, yes, there will always be font problems going between different platforms.

So what is your question?

R

Rothrock

Inspiring

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm getting excited over this. The issue is frusrating me, and I'm just trying to explain it as clearly as I can in the hopes of getting the best possible response.

In all my time on computers I have never seen this sort of issue (as I said before, different from the normal text differences), and so it has completely stumped me.

Based on your and other people's responses, it seems like this is just a bug with Flash on Macs, which, for someone who goes between platforms a few times per project, is frustrating. Hopefully Adobe will be able to fix this issue and make transitioning between operating systems a bit easier.

Does anyone know of a good way to get in contact with them, or show this thread to them? Does Adobe have community managers who read these forums?

I guess I'm still confused. You seem to suggest that the problem is that going back and forth between PCs and Macs causes alignment problems, but then you acknowledge that that is a problem pretty much with every program that deals with fonts. And you seem to be willing to extend the "that is just how it is" to every other program, but for some reason not to Flash...

But then it seems that that is not the real issue. The real issue seems to be that the text isn't aligned in the vertical middle of the text field. Which is a totally different thing. And isn't related at all the the switching between platforms, because...

Even if they fixed the vertical centering issue, then the regular issue would still be a problem -- and one that is likely never to be solved since Apple and Microsoft have very different ideas about font handling and screen display. So in the end the issue of jumping back and forth between platforms would still remain. So what is the point of getting all worked up about it? The alignment of text is likely to always be at least a little different between platforms -- whether it is just because the fonts differ or because the first baseline is placed differently by Flash.

And I'm not sure how you can be stumped. The solution is to not deal with the final alignment of fonts on one or the other platforms.

There are so many other cross-platform font issues -- embedded fonts not having the proper name, kearning, handling of higher unicode characters, etc. -- that will cause even bigger problems that it is really unwise to have final publishes from different platforms in any event.

If you do figure out something like, "on my Mac I need to bump all the textfields down by 4 points" or some such rule like that you could probably make a JSFL file that will go through and do that and then the inverse version form going back the other way. Of course that also really has the possibility of really messing up your project, but if it is really that big of an issue for you you might want to do it.

On the contacting Adobe side, this is a mostly user-to-user forum. Occasionally an Adobe employee will come through and/or respond. But the best thing to do is to file a bug report. This has been around a long time and I'm sure that others have reported it and yet Adobe has never fixed it. So I wouldn't hold my breath until it is fixed.

In the end I"m not saying that it isn't a little annoying, but is it really nearly the end of the world? Does it really make Flash on the Mac almost unusable and worthless?

S

Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

Does anyone have any ideas about this? Was my second image helpful at all?

S

Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

The root problem isn't that the alignment changes when bringing it back and forth (although as you can see it definitely is an issue), but rather that it isn't correct on the mac in the first place.

I have made a new image to help illustrate what the issue is more clearly. I hope this helps.

A

Anonymous

Hey Smef. Your description and screenshots are perfectly clear, I can see that without a doubt I'm facing exactly the same problem as you are. So far you're the only person I've found complaining about the problem, which seems odd... I would guess there are lots of developers out there who port FLA files back and forth between Windows and Mac. Perhaps there is something about your machine and mine that make us more vulnerable? Perhaps most people just suck it up and correct all their stuff manually? Perhaps I just have to do more searches to find people talking about it...

Anyway, if you've learned anything about solutions to this problem, please please let me know, I've got a lot of work to get caught up on after I get this shit sorted out...

Best wishes, and thanks in advance

Dave

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Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

So far I haven't found any way to correct it, which is dissapointing. Hopefully adobe will release some sort of a fix for this in the near future.

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NinaBos

Participant

Yes, I have the same problem (you are not alone!). Seems like the fonts have a really huge vertical baseline shift. When I set a hyphen as Superscript (it's to do with a chemical structure project I'm working on), it aligns itself to the middle of the text... quite annoying. I haven't found a solution as of yet. Flash doesn't seem to allow much in terms of preference settings for this.

It seems to be with all fonts too.

'~'

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Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

Am I asking this question in the wrong place? It's been over a month with zero replies.

I KNOW somebody here has used text in flash. If you have, how does your text align in your field? Take a look at the image I posted earlier. Does it align like my "windows" example or the "mac" example?

Is it just not possible to bring flash files from mac to PC or vice versa?

S

Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

Is there anyone that uses a mac for flash at all?

If you use windows, how does your text align?

S

Smef9444022Author

Participating Frequently

Does anybody else on here use a mac? Is this a problem on anyone else's mac? Does it work fine for everyone else's mac computers?