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matlabpsychtoolbox

How do i get the bounding rect of each word in a text (for reading eyetracking)?

For an eye tracking study i need the positions of each word in a text drawn to the window. I can see how I can get the bounding box of the whole text as a return value using 

[nx, ny, textbounds] = DrawFormattedText(win, tstring)

Is there a better way than drawing a whole sentence using this function word by word?

Solution

  • Something like this should do it:

    teststr = {'Hello World!' ; 'How are you doing?'}

ystart = 100
xstart = 200
wordgap = 10

for i=1:size(teststr,1)

  str=teststr{i};
  wordlist = strsplit(str , ' ');

  for j=1:size(wordlist)(1)
    [nx, ny, textbounds]=DrawFormattedText(win, wordlist{j} ,xstart, ystart);
    poslist{j} = textbounds;
    xstart=nx+wordgap;
  end

end

    Not pretty, but it works. You will get problems if you have linebreaks.

    EDIT: 2015-07-14: added wordgap suggestion from sven.io