How can I read paragraph box scale?

Question

Hi,
I am trying to read the values off some text boxes in photoshop for an exporter script that I am working on. I ran into an issue that I can't  figure out, hopefully it's just a small thing.
When reading the values from paragraph text, there are some instances in which the values will come out wrong. For example:
I have a layer with paragraph text in it that says its paragraph size (text box) is 400 px by 400 px and the font size is 60 pt.
If I run a script similar to this:
[code]
// get the text layer and save ir to a variable named layer //
if (layer.textItem.kind == TextType.PARAGRAPHTEXT)
     log("Width: " +  layer.textItem.width.as('px'));
     log("Height: " + layer.textItem.height.as('px'));
     log("Font size: " + layer.textItem.size.as('pt'));
[/code]
My output reads:
[code]
Width: 200
Height: 200
Font size: 30
[/code]
Which is obviously wrong because all the values are half of what they should be. I have other paragraph text layers in the same file that print out the correct values!
After trying a bunch of different things I figured a way to reproduce the error, but not a way to correct it, here it is:
- Create a new paragraph text layer by clicking and dragging using the text tool, make the text box roughly 200 px by 200 px
- Type some text in the box
- Select the text and make it 30 pt in size
- Finish editing the text
- Make sure the text layer is selected
- Press command+t (ctrl+t in windows)
- In the free transform parameters, manually type 200% for both with and height
- Accept the transformation changes
- Use the text tool and select the text from the layer
At this point you will notice that the text box reports its size as 400 px by 400 px and the font size says 60 pt, so far everything makes sense, the issue comes when you look at the info tab, the scale is reported as 200% for both width and height and if I use the previous script the sizes printed are the original sizes of the text box: 200 px by 200 px and 30 pt for the font size.
At first I though it would be as easy as using the verticalScale and horizontalScale properties of TextItem like so:
[code]
log("Vertical scale: " + layer.textItem.verticalScale);
log("Horizontal scale: " + layer.textItem.horizontalScale);
[/code]
But even though we know the scale is 200% the output reads:
[code]
Vertical scale: 100
Horizontal scale: 100
[/code]
Unfortunatelly I do not have control over how the content is created so I can't avoid the use of the transform tool on pararaph text, or all text for that matter (this issue also affects the font size in single line text layers). So I need to find a reliable way to either read the correct values from the text or to read the scale which is affecting the text within my layer.
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Dario Segura

Answer 1

After a few more experiments, you can get correct values from the 'bounds'-descriptor.
function getTextExtents(text_item) {
  app.activeDocument.activeLayer = text_item.parent
  var ref = new ActionReference()
  ref.putEnumerated( charIDToTypeID("Lyr "), charIDToTypeID("Ordn"), charIDToTypeID("Trgt") )
  var desc = executeActionGet(ref).getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID('textKey'))
  var bounds = desc.getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID('bounds'))
  var width = bounds.getUnitDoubleValue (stringIDToTypeID('right'))
  var height = bounds.getUnitDoubleValue (stringIDToTypeID('bottom'))
  var x_scale = 1
  var y_scale = 1
  if (desc.hasKey(stringIDToTypeID('transform'))) { 
  var transform = desc.getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID('transform'))
  x_scale = transform.getUnitDoubleValue (stringIDToTypeID('xx'))
  y_scale = transform.getUnitDoubleValue (stringIDToTypeID('yy'))
  return { x:Math.round(text_item.position[0]), y:Math.round(text_item.position[1]) , width:Math.round(width*x_scale), height:Math.round(height*y_scale) }
I tested that this returns correct values both when image and text box get scaled. There is some strange Photoshop behaviour to note though:
bounds.left seems to be always 0 like one could assume
bounds.top on the other had is most times -1-3px. This probably corresponds to the amount the actual text rises above the text box. I feel it's a bug, i.e. it should be part of content bounding box, not the text area. But maybe it's like it was specced and I'm just interpreting it wrong.
x_scale and y_scale seem to be always equal. For example if you create a 100x100px text box and scale it to 200px horizontally, both x_scale and y_scale will be 2 and text_item.height will be 50.