Boustrophedonic typesetting

gferreira

txt = "Boustrophedon is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Alternate lines of writing are flipped, or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern European languages, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored. It was a common way of writing in stone in ancient Greece.".upper()


def boustrophedonicTextBox(txt, box, drawFrame=False):

    x, y, w, h = box
    L = fontLineHeight()

    save()
    translate(x, y-L)

    T = ''
    lineLength = 0
    backward = False
    words = txt.split()
    lineCount = 0
    overflow = ''

    for i, word in enumerate(words):

        # add word to current line
        if lineLength + textSize(word)[0] <= w:
            T += word + ' '
            lineLength += textSize(word + ' ')[0]

        # break to next line
        else:
            # no more space for new line
            if not (lineCount+1) * L < h:
                overflow = T + ' '.join(words[i:])
                break

            # draw current line
            with savedState():
                # flip direction
                if backward:
                    scale(-1, 1)
                text(T, (0, 0), align='center')

            # begin new line
            translate(0, -L)
            backward = not backward
            lineCount += 1
            T = word + ' '
            lineLength = textSize(word + ' ')[0]

        # draw last line
        if i == len(words)-1:
            lineCount += 1
            with savedState():
                if backward:
                    scale(-1, 1)
                text(T, (0, 0), align='center')

    restore()

    if drawFrame:
        with savedState():
            fill(None)
            stroke(1, 0, 0)
            rect(x - w/2, y, w, -h)

    return overflow


font('Skia')
fontSize(36)
lineHeight(66)
txt = boustrophedonicTextBox(txt, (width()/2, height()-100, width()-80, 800), drawFrame=False)

print(txt)

imik

Thank you @gferreira! This is a nice example
Also a great motivation to spent a bit more time on writing well structured code. My scripts tend to get messy very quickly.

gferreira

@imik glad to hear that. cheers!!

Joaquin

Very useful for text proofing (color consistency). And also to make games with ornaments and patterns. Thank you very much!