Hi everyone,
I'm sure many of you are familiar with Chris's brilliant article on text handling functions (Top Twelve Text Tips). I often find myself revisiting it when I need to brush up on a specific function—it's a fantastic resource!
Recently, I've been experimenting with dynamic text box behaviors in Visio, and it got me thinking: what if we collaboratively designed a tool or framework that could handle all text box scenarios? A sort of "one tool to rule them all" for text boxes in Visio.
That's where I'd love your input!
Scenarios I've Encountered
Here are a few cases I've played around with, but I'm sure there's much more potential to explore:

• Dynamic dimensions: Fix one dimension (width or height) while making the other adjust dynamically based on content.
• Margin scaling: Adjust margins relative to font size for better proportional spacing.
• Text following control points: Make text follow a control point and adjust its orientation based on its relative position to the shape.
• Formula resetting: Use functions like Wapperdude's magical SET-Functions
• tricks to reset formulas after manual adjustments or keep text horizontal despite changes. (SETF/GETREF)
• Overflow handling: Manage overflowing text with ellipses (...), font size adjustments, or other creative solutions.
• Complex text boxes: Add advanced features like titles or even scrollable areas within text boxes.
• Hierarchy through font size: Establish visual hierarchy in diagrams purely by varying font sizes.

What Else Can We Imagine?
What other smart behaviors or use cases for text boxes can you think of? Let your creativity run wild!
How Should We Organize This?
I'd also love to hear your thoughts on how best to structure and deliver these ideas. Here are some potential approaches:

• A sample document showcasing all the examples for reference and experimentation.
• A stencil with pre-configured smart masters, ready to drop into any diagram.
• A stencil with a configurator macro to customize text box behaviors dynamically.

Let's collaborate and see how far we can take this idea. Feel free to share any ideas, suggestions, or examples you've worked on. Whether it's a practical application or just a fun experiment, everything is welcome!
Looking forward to your insights.
Cheers,
Yacine

Hi, Yacine!

Quote from: Yacine on January 10, 2025, 02:38:08 PM

• Text following control points: Make text follow a control point and adjust its orientation based on its relative position to the shape.

I can offer my example of moving text with control points. Please try 1st master-shape in this stencil

GIF for explain

That would make a nice template for a Title page.  Might consider 2 options... A) add a scalable graphic "holder", perhaps on a layer, and B) a background graphic / watermark.

@Yacine:  some additional features
1) high contrast text
2) complementary text coloring
3) scaling / sizing text
4) incorporating JuneThe2nd's texting development

My first submission.

On the two last pages I played with the shapetext function.
1. Putting the text of the shape in one of its sub-shapes in order to manipulate it.
2. This is not a text box, but a quite neat exercise, where I use the shape's text to populate custom properties. Could be interesting, if you need to edit many shapes. You see the result right away instead of needing to select the shapes individually and edit the value in the custom props window.

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As for the organisation of the project, maybe a github page would be nice?
https://github.com/Visio-Resources/Text-boxes-and-functions

Some additional sources to smarty text handling ideas that might be of inspirational / conceptual benefit:
You cannot view this attachment.

https://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=7389.msg31092#msg31092

Of course, this merely scrathes the surface, but, these came to mind in terms of creating a smart shape or perhaps, a library of smart text shapes.  There are so many nuances, seems unlikely a single, universal shape can satisfy all.