_Text

_Text is a simple augmentation to SwiftUI that makes styling easier. By utilizing the environment it is possible to apply text modifiers to any views children text. The goal of this library is to make it as seamless as possible to adopt _Text in your own projects.

Things of note:

• This library comes with 2 packages, _Text and _TextCore. The namesake package typealiases Text to _Text and exports core. If you would prefer not to do that, import _TextCore instead.
• This library extends a lot of the SwiftUI interfaces to provide seamless interop where Text would be used. We attempt to cover all of the interfaces.
• _Text reflects the exact same API as Text, and the APIs function the same. However, the only way for our indirect styles to be applied is if our text object is rendered in a View. This is due to the reliance on Environment in order to work.
• You can even concatenate _Text with Text!

If you are using this library & also other SwiftUI components that accept a Text property, you may want create shims for the components intitializers or you can utilize _Text._text to get the inner SwiftUI Text container.

Examples

There are a view ways to utilize _Text, here are a few examples:

Basic

Note the way we are importing here. This is so our Text can take over for the SwiftUI Text, otherwise we would get amigious type warnings or have to use _Text everywhere.

import SwiftUI
import struct _Text.Text

struct ContentView: View {
  var body: some View {
    VStack {
      Text("Oh wow, I am BOLD!")

      Text("Oh wow, I am BOLD and WIDE!")
        .text(.kerning(2))
        
      Text("Oh wow, I am ITALIC, BOLD, and WIDE!")
        .text(.kerning(2))
        .text(.italic())
    }
    .text(.bold())
  }
}

Closure

Closure stylings behave differently from the way text(_:) works. This technique for applying style works most similarly to how the various styles in SwiftUI function, like listStyle(_:) and buttonStyle(_:).

You get the underlying Text instance that needs styling in a closure, then return it when finished.

import SwiftUI
import struct _Text.Text

struct ContentView: View {
  var body: some View {
    VStack {
      Text("Oh wow, I am ITALIC, BOLD, and WIDE!")
    }
    .textStyle {
      $0.italic().bold().kerning(2) // implicit return! nice.
    }
  }
}

Styles

Styles work exactly like they do in other SwiftUI components. You first conform to the protocol TextStyle, then implement your desired styling. The styling aspect is very similar to how the closure works, but instead is embedded in a struct. The benefit of that is you can now customize the style in a more controller way, or even listen to Environment and change how your text gets styled.

import SwiftUI
import struct _Text.Text

struct ContentView: View {
  var body: some View {
    VStack {
      Text("Oh wow, I am ITALIC, BOLD, and WIDE!")
      Text("Sub header")
        .textStyle(.subheader)
    }
    .textStyle(.header)
  }
}

extension TextStyle where Self == HeaderTextStyle {
  static var header: Self { .init() }
}

struct HeaderTextStyle: TextStyle {
  func applyStyle(_ text: SwiftUI.Text) -> SwiftUI.Text {
    text.font(.largeTitle).bold().kerning(2)
  }
}

extension TextStyle where Self == SubheaderTextStyle {
  static var subheader: Self { .init() }
}

struct SubheaderTextStyle: TextStyle {
  func applyStyle(_ text: SwiftUI.Text) -> SwiftUI.Text {
    text.italic().foregroundColor(.secondary)
  }
}

3rd Party

When interacting with external libraries that may require we pass SwiftUI's Text, we have two ways of handling this, but both have the unfortunate side effect of our indirect styles not being applied. The preferred workaround is using a manual content closure instead of passing Text when possible.

Use eraseToText()

import SwiftUI
import _Text
import NeatButton

struct ContentView: View {
 var body: some View {
   VStack {
     // This library accepts normal SwiftUI `Text`, not `_Text`.
     NeatButton(
       Text("Oh wow, I am ITALIC, BOLD, and WIDE!").eraseToText()
     ) {
       // do something...
     }
   }
   .textStyle {
     $0.italic().bold().kerning(2) // implicit return! nice.
   }
 }
}

Create shims

If you are going to be interacting with a library often, it is probably easier to create a shim.

import SwiftUI
import _Text
import NeatButton

extension NeatButton {
   init(_ text: _Text, action: () -> Void) {
     self.init(text.eraseToText(), action: action)
   }
}

struct ContentView: View {
 var body: some View {
   VStack {
     // Now _Text is erased to Text when we use it.
     NeatButton(Text("Oh wow, I am ITALIC, BOLD, and WIDE!")) {
       // do something...
     }
   }
   .textStyle {
     $0.italic().bold().kerning(2) // implicit return! nice.
   }
 }
}

License

This library is released under the MIT license.