Width of Text property& background mask

[Organic]

When you click a piece of text in AutoCad and look on the properties pane, there is a 'width' variable. Why does the background mask for the text still work when the width property for the text is set to 0 or are these totally unrelated? What purpose does the width property of text actually serve (when it seemingly works fine when on 0)?

[irneb]

I'm assuming you're referring to MText. In which case a width=0 means that you have to press Enter at the end of each line, i.e. the new lines only happen where you press an Enter. If the Width > 0 then the lines will automatically wrap when they reach that distance from the start of the MText.

 

As for the background mask, it works on the greater of the Width property and the length of the longest line of text. See this screen capture:

[CyberAngel]

Another way to look at it--each multitext object is like a little document. You can adjust the fonts, the spacing, the justification, etc. There's an imaginary piece of paper underneath it, which you see when you have a background mask. If you set a Width, you've set the maximum width of that piece of paper. If you leave the Width at zero, the paper width defaults to the longest line, that is, the minimum width that will hold the entire document.

[SLW210]

You adjust the Border offset factor to change the size of the background mask.