Cropping text

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Cropping text

There are some rare cases in which it is useful to crop a given text line and loose part of its information.

\doboundtext

Sometimes there is not enough room to show the complete (line of) text. In such a situation we can strip of some characters by using

\doboundtext {text} {width} {sentinel}

When the text is wider than the given width, it's split and the third argument (sentinel) is appended. As much text as possible is printed.

An example

\doboundtext{My entire inheritance goes to my beloved cat Pussy!}{60mm}{...}

and it's result

\limitatetext

A bit more beautiful alternative for the previous command is \limitatetext. This command takes care of word boundaries, so that only complete words will appear in the final (cropped) text.

\limitatetext {text}  {width} {sentinel}
\limitatetext {text} {-width} {prelude}

When no width is given, the whole text becomes available. A negative value crops the beginning and the text starts with the prelude. Sentinel and prelude are optional.

Example:

\limitatetext {Pussy is the name of the cat!}{38mm}{...}\par
\limitatetext {Pussy is the name of the cat!}{-38mm}{...}

leads to


Both commands have their range of application. \limitatetext is more robust (using grouping tokens like \underbar is possible), while \doboundtext works better on text that cannot be hyphenated.

\limitatefirstline

In ConTeXt versions newer than 07.09.2005 there is also a command called \limitatefirstline, which acts nearly like \doboundtext, but at a more robust level. This macro first tries to break the given text at character level. It uses nearly the same breaking mechanism as \limitatetext, so it shares the problem with nonbreakable text. But in contrast to \limitatetext it has a second mechanism, that is only used, if the prior one fails. This fail safe mechanism "simply" clips (no breaking at all) the text to the desired measures. This is done without any consideration to character boundaries. So you must live with the fact, that the last character can be cut off at any possible place.

\limitatefirstline {text} {width} {sentinel}

Example:

\limitatefirstline {\underbar{Mr.~Drofnats was happiest when he was at work%
 typesetting beautiful documents.}{110mm}{\unknown}

A direct comparison

It's all in the garden. 0123456789 \underbar{In a bar, under the sea}
\doboundtext not possible
\limitatetext
\limitatefirstline