A Flutter package that provides a paginated text view with optional auto-sized initial drop cap.

• Text is paginated automatically to fit in the widget's layout size;
• Use any (or no) animation and controls you want; this package provides the controller and a widget with a builder, but you can also make your own custom widget;
• The first letter can be a drop cap that is automatically positioned and sized:
  • the actual letter height(s) (using the letter 'Z') of the cap and text fonts is/are computed and cached:
    • Flutter currently provides no internal means to get the actual letter height of a font, therefore it must be painted, converted to an image, and inspected for the top/bottom pixels of the 'Z';
    • The result is cached (once each run for each font family, weight, and style) as a ratio and used to compute the font size from the desired letter height;
    • NOTE: This method currently does not work well with gothic, handwriting, or calligraphic font types;
  • the baseline of the drop cap is aligned to the baseline of the nth line of text (configurable with capLines);
  • the top of the drop cap font is aligned to the top of the text font of the first line.
• Can parse inline markdown (DropCapText adopted from drop_cap_text)
• Breaks pages automatically:

enum PageBreak {
  /// Break pages on the last visible word of the page.
  word,

  /// Attempt to break pages at a period, comma, semicolon, or em dash (-- / —).
  sentenceFragment,

  /// Attempt to break pages at the end of a sentence.
  sentence,

  /// Attempt to break at paragraphs (two consecutive newlines).
  paragraph;
}

This package has no dependencies other than Dart 3 / Flutter 3 and collection, and no platform-specific dependencies. (It could probably run in Dart / Flutter 2 but I don't intend to support older Flutter versions -- please fork in this case.)

Basic usage (best in a StatefulWidget or other provider such as Riverpod / Flutter Hooks -- neither is required -- that you can manage state with) is as follows:

final controller = PaginatedController(PaginateData(
    // required arguments:
    text: 'Here, you should pass the text you wish to paginate...',
    dropCapLines: 3,
    style: TextStyle(fontSize: 24),

    // optional arguments:
    dropCapStyle: GoogleFonts.bellefair(),
    pageBreak: PageBreak.paragraph,
    breakLines: 1,
    resizeTolerance: 3,
    parseInlineMarkdown: true,
));

...

@override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => PaginatedText(controller);

If not specified, the dropCapStyle will take on the same fontFamily, fontWeight, and fontStyle as the main body style. The fontSize of dropCapStyle is ignored because it is automatically sized to the number of lines specified in dropCapLines.

The page can be changed via controller.next(), controller.previous(), and controller.setPageIndex(index).

More to come...

Contributions / suggestions / PRs welcome. My priority will be: bug fixes, usage in my project, improvements to API or Flutter best practices, then new features. I don't plan to introduce any dependencies but rather use the Builder pattern to afford easier integration.

MIT