ALIGN_JUSTIFIED for iText list item - pdf

Question

I want to set alignment to list items by writing this code -
ListItem alignJustifiedListItem =
new ListItem(bundle.getString(PrintKeys.AckProcess), normalFont8);
alignJustifiedListItem.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
I see this doesn't make any change on alignment (defaulted as left aligned). Changing it to
alignJustifiedListItem.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED_ALL); is actually working but then the last line of the content also expands (as mentioned in doc, as well)
I dont understand when ListItem extends Paragraph, how setAlignment() behaviour can change. I don't see any overriding as well.

Answer 1

Please take a look at the ListAlignment example.
In this example, I create a list with three list items of which I set the alignment to ALIGN_JUSTIFIED:
List list = new List(List.UNORDERED);
ListItem item = new ListItem(text);
item.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
list.add(item);
text = "a b c align ";
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
text = text + text;
}
item = new ListItem(text);
item.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
list.add(item);
text = "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ";
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
text = text + text;
}
item = new ListItem(text);
item.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
list.add(item);
document.add(list);
If you look at the result, you can see that the alignment works as expected:
I deliberately introduced a very long word such as "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to show you that all lines but the last are indeed justified.
Update:
In a comment, you claim that the alignment is wrong when you introduce the \ character, and you want me to fix iText. However, there is nothing to fix.
I have adapted the original example like this:
text = "a b c align ";
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
text = text + "\\" + text;
}
item = new ListItem(text);
item.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
list.add(item);
text = "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ";
text = text + text;
text = text + text;
text = text + "\n" + text;
item = new ListItem(text);
item.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
list.add(item);
In the first case, I have introduce the \ character. This didn't change anything to the behavior of the ListItem. In the second case, I introduce a newline character. The result was as expected: a newline character was introduced and the last line of every "paragraph" that was defined by the newline character was indeed not justified. That is what one would normally expect. I would introduce a bug if I would change this.
This is the screen shot of the result:
The introduction of the '\' character in the lines with "a b c align " doesn't have any effect on the alignment. The introduction of the newline half way the "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious " part breaks the list item in two parts. The final line of each part is not justified, which is the desired behavior.
If you do not want this desired behavior, you have to parse the content first and remove all newlines characters (carriage return and line feed).
Update:
In a new comment, you mention the '\' character as an escape character for the ''' character (actually the \' character). I have adapted the original example once more:
text = "a b c\' align ";
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
text = text + text;
}
item = new ListItem(text);
item.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
list.add(item);
The result looks like this:
The text is justified correctly. However, I can imagine that problems can occur if you handle Strings with escape characters incorrectly. In this case, the '\'' character was hardcoded. If you obtain the String from a database and you read that String incorrectly, then you can have strange results. Especially from my days as a PHP developer, I remember instances where a single quote ended up to be stored like this '\\\'' in a database if you didn't watch out.