How to fit text in a circle in UILabel

Question

I\'d like to flow the text in UILabel into a circle (instead of rect). I did some experiments with NSLayoutManager, NSTextContainer an

Answer 1

You can't do this in a UILabel because it doesn't give you access to the TextKit stack. What I do is to build my own TextKit stack and subclass NSTextContainer:

-(CGRect)lineFragmentRectForProposedRect:(CGRect)proposedRect atIndex:(NSUInteger)characterIndex writingDirection:(NSWritingDirection)baseWritingDirection remainingRect:(CGRect *)remainingRect {
    CGRect result = [super lineFragmentRectForProposedRect:proposedRect atIndex:characterIndex writingDirection:baseWritingDirection remainingRect:remainingRect];
    CGRect r = CGRectMake(0,0,self.size.width,self.size.height);
    UIBezierPath* circle = [UIBezierPath bezierPathWithOvalInRect:r];
    CGPoint p = result.origin;
    while (![circle containsPoint:p]) {
        p.x += .1;
        result.origin = p;
    }
    CGFloat w = result.size.width;
    p = result.origin;
    p.x += w;
    while (![circle containsPoint:p]) {
        w -= .1;
        result.size.width = w;
        p = result.origin;
        p.x += w;
    }
    return result;
}

Crude but effective. Looks like this: