Text & typography
Adding & editing text
Every piece of type in Popcorn Editor lives inside a text frame on the Canvas. A frame can grow to fit whatever you type, or stay a fixed box that your words wrap and flow inside — and knowing the difference is the key to clean, predictable layouts.
Add text with the Text tool
Reach for the Text tool in the left toolbar — hover and you'll see the tooltip Text with its shortcut, T. There are two ways to place a frame:
- Click once to drop a point-text frame that grows sideways as you type. Good for a headline or a single label.
- Click and drag to draw a fixed-size box at the dimensions you want. Good for a paragraph, a caption block, or anything that has to fit a set area.
Either way, a blinking cursor appears and you can start typing right away.
Type and edit
To edit text you've already placed, double-click it with the Select tool (V) — that drops you into edit mode with the cursor where you clicked. From there:
- Select a range — drag across some words — to format just that run. Change the font, weight or color and only the highlighted characters change.
- A small floating toolbar appears above your selection with the most common controls, so you can restyle without leaving the Canvas.
- Press Esc, or click empty space, to exit edit mode and go back to moving the frame around.
The full set of type controls lives in the Properties panel on the right whenever a text frame is selected.
The Resizing control
Open the Properties panel with a text frame selected and you'll find a three-button segment labeled Resizing. It decides how the frame reacts to its own contents:
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Auto width | The frame grows horizontally as you type. Text never wraps — the box just gets longer. Ideal for headlines and short labels. |
| Auto height | The width stays put; the frame grows downward as text wraps onto new lines. Ideal for body copy where you've decided the column width. |
| Fixed size | Both dimensions stay exactly as you set them. Text wraps to the width and, if there's too much of it, overflows the bottom. |
Switching modes is non-destructive — you can move a frame from Auto height to Fixed size and back without losing any text.
Overflow on fixed frames
When a frame is set to Fixed size, a second control appears: Overflow. It only shows in this mode, because it only matters when text can outgrow its box. You get two choices:
- Visible — text that doesn't fit spills past the frame's bottom edge and stays on screen.
- Clip — anything past the frame edge is hidden, so the box shows only as much text as fits.
Tip: Clip is handy for tight layouts where you never want type escaping its area — but remember the extra words are still there, just hidden. Widen the frame or shrink the text to bring them back.
If you have more copy than one frame can hold and you want it to continue somewhere else rather than be hidden, that's a job for threading — linking one frame to the next so a single story flows across several boxes. Threading is covered in its own article on columns and threading text.
Custom frame shapes
Most text frames are plain rectangles, but you can also flow text inside a custom shape. When a fixed frame has a non-rectangular shape, Properties adds a Frame shape section:
- Inset pads the text inward from the shape's edges, so letters don't crowd the border.
- Reset to rectangle snaps the frame back to a plain box when you're done experimenting.
Most designs never need this — reach for it only when you deliberately want type to follow a shape.
Move, resize and rotate
Selected frames show handles on the Canvas:
- Drag a side or corner handle to change the box. In Fixed size mode the box changes and the text reflows to the new width; in the auto modes the frame resizes along its free axis.
- Drag just outside a corner to rotate.
If you want the type itself to scale up with the box — rather than reflow — use the Scale tool (K) instead of dragging with Select. That resizes an object and its contents together.
Where to go next
With text on the Canvas, the natural next step is choosing the right typeface — see Fonts & the Font Book. If you're still getting your bearings, A tour of the workspace maps out the Canvas, toolbar and Properties panel.