There are many ways to customize texts.
Text types:
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basic text: Per default, BS Contact VRML computes a 3D representation for VRML Text nodes by getting True-Type outlines for each character and tessellates these into a set of triangles. This gives high quality text, but performance suffers due to the tessellation step and the high amount of triangles produced
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fontTexture text: in order to enhance the render, you can also use the fontTexture option for BS Contact VRML to create an image from the font and use it as texture instead of creating many tesselations that occur with basic text. The author can force one text (by using "USE_TEXTURE") or globally all texts (by using Browser.setOption) to use that algorithm (or not), and the user can specify in its preferences (F9 -> Performances options -> Use textures for text) to use it too
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texture text: (don't confuse with fontTexture) this lets you specify an image (ex: transparent .png give nice resultse) to use as font, what gives the author the possibility to create his own fonts without worrying about the font being installed or not on the client side. Aditionnally, you can modify some parameters such as minimum/maximum character code or the space between letters.
But the author can also set and mix style parameters such as:
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weight / boldness: typical values are between 0 and 1000
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italic -
alignment: center, left, right...
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font family: the author can provide a Windows True Type font name (ex: Arial, Times New Roman)
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language: several Windows specific language codes are recognized such as ANSI, SYMBOL (as used in the example), HEBREW, ARABIC, GREEK, etc..
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order: write from left to right, top to bottom
- etc...
The strings are encoded in utf8, which allows you to use a very wide range of characters, like the russian text example shows.
In the example, change the "Text" field to change the string in realtime (except for the russian example).
