al_draw_multiline_text(3)

✨ al_draw_multiline_text — the Allegro 5 API glow-up ✨

okay so bestie, this one lives in the Allegro 5 API manual, and it's literally the multiline text queen. if you've ever wanted to draw a whole paragraph instead of one sad little line, this is your girl 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <allegro5/allegro_font.h>

void al_draw_multiline_text(const ALLEGRO_FONT *font,
     ALLEGRO_COLOR color, float x, float y, float max_width, float line_height,
     int flags, const char *text)

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So it's basically al_draw_text(3) but with main character energy — it draws multiple lines of text. It breaks your text into lines based on what's actually in the string and on the max_width parameter. Then those lines get laid out vertically according to the line_height parameter, and each one is drawn exactly as if you'd called al_draw_text(3) on it. cute, right? 🎀

A newline \n in the text causes a "hard" line break right after it appears in the string. Anything after a hard break goes on a new line, periodt. Carriage return \r is not supported — it will not cause a line break, and it'll probably get drawn as a square or a space depending on the font. so like, don't bother 🙈

The max_width parameter controls the maximum desired width of the lines. This function will try to introduce a "soft" line break after the longest possible series of words that will fit in max_length when drawn with the given font. ngl a "soft" line break can happen either on a space or a tab (\t) character. ✨

But listen — it's totally possible that max_width is too small, or that the words in text are too long to fit in max_width when drawn with font. In that case, the word that's too wide just gets drawn completely on a line by itself. no cap. If you don't want the text overflowing max_width to be visible, then use al_set_clipping_rectangle(3) to clip it off and hide it. very much the move 🫶

The lines that text got split into will each be drawn using the font, x, color and flags parameters, vertically starting at y and with a distance of line_height between them. And if line_height is zero (0), then the value returned by calling al_get_font_line_height(3) on font gets used as the default instead. slay 💫

These flags get honoured by this function, and yes she's picking favorites:

• ALLEGRO_ALIGN_LEFT
• ALLEGRO_ALIGN_CENTRE
• ALLEGRO_ALIGN_RIGHT
• ALLEGRO_ALIGN_INTEGER

And if you wanna calculate the size of what this function will draw without actually drawing it, or if you need a complex and/or custom layout, you can use al_do_multiline_text(3). iykyk 👑

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⭐ SINCE ⭐

5.1.9 — vintage but iconic 🦋

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• al_do_multiline_text(3)
• al_draw_multiline_ustr(3)
• al_draw_multiline_textf(3)

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okay that's the whole page bestie, go forth and draw some paragraphs 💜

this came from the Allegro reference manual, dated with the al_draw_multiline_text(3) footer — mwah, enjoy the lore 🎀✨