Mtext editor

[Jettero2112]

Is there anyway to change the mtext editor in ACAD 2004 to look and act like in the previous versions of AutoCAD? It is a pain in the backside to work with. Thanks.

[Glenn Pope]

Exactly what problems are you having with it?

[Jettero2112]

Here you go...

The toolbar is not attached to the editor screen. Pain to move around.
The dang things size seems to be dependent on how far into the text I'm zoomed and the location of the text on the screen. I always have to resize the screen editor box.
A lot of the time it shows up at the bottom of my screen, very tiny, and when I start typing in text, the text disappears (might be a video problem, but I doubt it.)
It's just very annoying to use. I'd like to have it be one piece (toolbar and editing screen) and remain a constant size (large) and in the same place (centered) every time I edit text. Hopefully this is not just wishful thinking. Also, is there a way to change the background color of the editor box without changing the color of your drawing background? Thanks.

[jaberwok]

From another group -
try changing the MTEXTFIXED variable to 1. This will keep the mtext window fixed and not transparent.

John B

[Jettero2112]

Thank-you. Mtextfixed (1) worked great. Any suggestions on changing the color of the editor's background screen without changing the color of the drawing background?

[Mike.Perry]

Any suggestions on changing the color of the editor's background screen without changing the color of the drawing background?
Hi

As far as I'm aware you can't (but that doesn't mean a lot).

Have a good one, Mike

[sinc]

Autocad definitely needs to work on a good way of editing mtext. There definitely isn't one in 2004, anyway. It sounds like setting mtexted to 1 may work for you, but I find it annoying. 80% of my mtexts are relatively small width, so if I set mtexted to 1 and create a large text editor, most of the time the text is a few tiny lines way up in the upper-left corner of a huge empty space. I've also gotten used to clicking in the drawing window instead of hitting "OK" to finish editing mtext, and this isn't as convenient if you have a huge text-edit window covering most of the screen.

Setting mtexted=0 has its own quirks. The most annoying one is that the mtext window pops open with the text at some random scale, so sometimes you have really tiny text that is nearly illegible, and sometimes you have huge text so large that you can only see a few letters on the screen. You can change the size of the text using CTRL+mouseWheel, but that doesn't change the line-size of the edit window. For example, if you make the text smaller using CTRL+mouseWheel, what used to be a paragraph will all be on one line, which is very annoying. The only way I've found around this problem is to repeatedly open and close the mtext editor until the text appears at a usable size. The text editor also has a tendency to appear partially-transparent from time to time, although this can be fixed by either clicking on the toolbar or by resizing or moving the text edit window.

You can set an external text editor, but then you lose all WYSIWYG ability. In order to format text, you have to type esoteric strings like "\pi-40,l40,t40;". In my opinion, that makes the ability to set a different mtext editor completely worthless. You can also end up applying formatting in an external editor that you can't apply in the Autocad mtext editor (like changing the character width of part of an mtext), but the normal mtext editor complains if you then try and use it to edit that piece of mtext. That means anyone else working on your drawing won't be able to edit that mtext unless they, too, change their mtext editor to an external editor.

Another shortcoming is the inability to make shape fonts bold, unless you use color-dependant plot styles. With named plot-styles, you have to create a seperate text entity, set to a different lineweight, in order to create bold text. This means you have to manually keep multiple text entities synched together, which is annoying (not so annoying as to cause one to use CTBs over STBs, but annoying nonetheless).

Despite all the shortcomings when it comes to editing, using mtext is still preferable to using single-line text in many situations. You just have to suffer with a terrible interface.

[mjfarrell]

This would be an excellent opportunity for AutoDesk
to honor, it's customers loyalty by releasing a patch
to fix this New & Improved mtext editing window.
Although I suspect that it will remain as it is for an
interminable period of time, or perhaps this will become
the ONLY reason to upgrade to the next version.
Now that is some forward thinking marketing folks!

[Mike.Perry]

Hi richards.64879

Have you thought of posting some AutoCAD Wish List Items -

ACAD 2005 Wish List (http://forums.augi.com/forumdisplay.php?f=57)

Have a good one, Mike