: Warp/shrink text only if too big for text area in Illustrator I'm creating a multilingual PDF in Illustrator with variables and would like to use single line text area boxes to control type.

@Shanna688

Using the unwieldy characters and lines and paragraph scripting objects, you can use some method to check whether the area text is overset. Here in this script there is a function which sums it up.

function isOverset(textBox) {
if (textBox.lines.length > 0) {
if (textBox.lines[0].characters.length < textBox.characters.length) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
} else if (textBox.characters.length > 0) {
return true;
}
}


Also I wrote this LinkedIn article for this subject to whomever may find it useful.

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@Pope1402555

This seems like a very ugly solution, so I'm eager to see improvement. It turns out I needed to set the width of the textPath, not the textFrame. I also had a lot of unknown problems with applying .convertPointObjectToAreaObject() and its reverse to variables as if they were losing the reference.

function shrink_all_text_frames_to_fit (layer_name) {
var currentLayer = app.activeDocument.layers[layer_name];
for (var i = 1; i < currentLayer.textFrames.length; i++) {
currentLayer.textFrames[i].textRange.characterAttributes.horizontalScale = 100; // reset so the script can be run multiple times
while (check_text_overflow(currentLayer, i))
shrinkAndCheckSize(currentLayer, i);
}
}

function check_text_overflow(layer, frame_number) {
var save_box_fontsize = layer.textFrames[frame_number].textRange.characterAttributes.size;
var save_box_width = layer.textFrames[frame_number].width;
var save_box_height = layer.textFrames[frame_number].height;
var save_horizontal_scale = layer.textFrames[frame_number].textRange.characterAttributes.horizontalScale;
layer.textFrames[frame_number].textPath.width = 200; // Set high to avoid the next line clipping text
layer.textFrames[frame_number].convertAreaObjectToPointObject(); // Convert to point type to measure width
var text_width = layer.textFrames[frame_number].width;
layer.textFrames[frame_number].convertPointObjectToAreaObject(); // Convert back to area and restore size
layer.textFrames[frame_number].width = save_box_width;
layer.textFrames[frame_number].height = save_box_height;
layer.textFrames[frame_number].textRange.characterAttributes.horizontalScale = save_horizontal_scale;
layer.textFrames[frame_number].textRange.characterAttributes.size = save_box_fontsize;
return (text_width > save_box_width);
}

function shrinkAndCheckSize(layer, frame_number) {
layer.textFrames[frame_number].textRange.characterAttributes.horizontalScale -= 5;
}

shrink_all_text_frames_to_fit("Layer Name");

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