Text Layout Framework

Overview

The Text Layout Framework is an extensible ActionScript library, built on the new text engine in Adobe® Flash® Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5, which delivers advanced, easy-to-integrate typographic and text layout features for rich, sophisticated and innovative typography on the web. The framework is designed to be used with Adobe Flex® or Adobe Flash Professional and is included in Flex 4, code named "Gumbo". Developers can use or extend existing components, or use the framework to create their own text components.

See the feature tour and the online rich text editor demo on Adobe Labs.

Download

The Text Layout Framework and source are bundled with the Flex 4 SDK. See the Flex SDK page.

Download examples.

Using the Text Layout Framework with Adobe Flex Builder 3.2
Using the Text Layout Framework with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional

Getting Involved

There are many ways to contribute to Text Layout Framework. Note that all bugs and documentation are handled through the Flex SDK.

‍ More information

Text Layout Framework 1.0 Major Feature List

The Text Layout Framework and the new text engine in Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5 bring some amazing new capabilities to the Flash Platform, including:

  • Bidirectional text, vertical text and over 30 writing scripts including Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, and others
  • Selection, editing and flowing text across multiple columns and linked containers
  • Vertical text, Tate-Chu-Yoko (horizontal within vertical text) and justifier for East Asian typography
  • Rich typographical controls, including kerning, ligatures, typographic case, digit case, digit width and discretionary hyphens
  • Cut, copy, paste, undo and standard keyboard and mouse gestures for editing
  • Rich developer APIs to manipulate text content, layout, markup and create custom text components
  • ActionScript-based object-oriented model for rich text layout enabling live updates