Problem with centering text

T$$anonymous$$s is actually quite a bit harder than I thought but here is my stab at it. First some disclaimers:

Disclaimers

• T$$anonymous$$s code is more of a 'proof of concept' and probably could be optimized / improved quite a bit and isn't the type of t$$anonymous$$ng you should really run every frame.

• There are scenarios in w$$anonymous$$ch t$$anonymous$$s code generates similar bad looking text as unity depending on the length of the words in the text / etc. It might be possible to improve t$$anonymous$$s by allowing words to be broken into pieces but for readability I suggest keeping words intact.

  ---

  Full Test Code

The following code draws two text boxes - the one on the left uses Unity3D standard label the other one uses some code to format the text before drawing. I added a button so that you can toggle between growing / shrinking the labels to see how the word wrap works at various sizes.

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 
 public class TestDraw : MonoBehaviour 
 {
     Vector2 area = new Vector2(275.0f, 200.0f);
     bool grow = false;
     
     void OnGUI()
     {
         // Common content
         string testContent = "T$$anonymous$$s is a centered text meant to show my problem regarding centering of text. The problem is that sometimes it looks like t$$anonymous$$s.";
         if(!grow) { area.x -= 0.05f; } else { area.x += 0.05f; }
 
         // Bad text alignment
         Rect badDisplayArea = new Rect(5.0f, 5.0f, area.x, area.y);
         GUI.skin.label.alignment = TextAnchor.MiddleCenter;
         GUI.Box(badDisplayArea, "");
         GUI.Label(badDisplayArea, testContent);
         
         // Good text alignment
         Rect goodDisplayArea = new Rect(area.x + 10.0f, 5.0f, area.x, area.y);
         GUI.skin.label.alignment = TextAnchor.MiddleCenter;
         GUI.Box(goodDisplayArea, "");
         DrawCenteredText(testContent, goodDisplayArea);
         
         // Toggle shrinking / grow
         if( GUI.Button(new Rect( 5.0f, area.y + 50.0f, 50.0f, 50.0f), "Toggle\nGrow")) { grow = !grow; }
     }
     
     // Note t$$anonymous$$s function will only be work inside an OnGUI method or inside of another method used by OnGUI
     private void DrawCenteredText(string textToDraw, Rect textArea)
     {
         // Get the style we are using for the text
         GUIStyle getStyle = GUI.skin.GetStyle("Label");
         
         // Store text alignment
         TextAnchor storeAlignment = getStyle.alignment;
         getStyle.alignment = TextAnchor.MiddleCenter;
         
         // Create the content object to prevent duplicate 'new GUIContent(textToDraw)' calls
         GUIContent textContent = new GUIContent(textToDraw);
         
         // Figure out the width of the text without clipping it
         float textWidth = getStyle.CalcSize(textContent).x;
         
         // Figure out the height of the text with clipping
         float textHeight = getStyle.CalcHeight(textContent, textArea.width);
         
         // Figure out the average line width
         float lineCount = (textHeight / getStyle.lineHeight) - 0.25f; // Modify 0.25f for fine tuning
         float averageLineWidth = textWidth / lineCount;
         
         // Go through and construct the centered text
         string resultText = "";
         string centeredLine = "";
         float currentLineWidth = 0.0f;
         string[] wordsInText = textToDraw.Split(' ');
         for(int i = 0; i < wordsInText.Length; i++)
         {
             float wordSize = getStyle.CalcSize(new GUIContent(wordsInText[i])).x;
             
             // Add the line if the word will make it go over
             if(currentLineWidth + wordSize > averageLineWidth)
             {
                 // Add the line to the result
                 resultText += centeredLine + "\n";
                 
                 // Reset line and width
                 centeredLine = "";
                 currentLineWidth = 0.0f;
             }
             currentLineWidth += wordSize;
             centeredLine += wordsInText[i] + " ";
         }
 
         // Add the line to the result
         resultText += centeredLine;
 
         // Draw the text
         GUI.Label(textArea, resultText);
         
         // Restore alignment
         getStyle.alignment = storeAlignment;
     }
 }

What Does The Code Do?

My approach was to find out how wide text being displayed is along with how many lines the text is being displayed over and then figure out an average line width and add a new line to any line that will be larger than the average line width.

Knowing that the code should be somewhat self explanatory (I hope).