how are you indicating flash should display bold font?

TextField.defaultTextFormat is defined for any fields you don't wish to continuously set the TextFormat object for. If you intend on setting the format once, use defaultTextFormat.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/fla sh/text/TextField.html#defaultTextFormat

Just use a TLFTextField. I embedded fonts in my library: Garamond Bold (exported for actionscript as GBold, type: TLF) and Garamond Regular (exported for actionscript as GRegular, type: TLF). Just numbers/letters embedded.

I added a stage handler for click and on click it just formats a portion of the text with bold or no bold, works fine for me.

Open new AS3 doc in Flash Pro. Embed any fonts like mentioned above and adjust the class name as needed below:

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import fl.text.TLFTextField;

import flash.text.Font;

import flash.text.TextFormat;

 

var useBold:Boolean = false;

 

// fonts

var gRegFont:Font = new GRegular();

var gBoldFont:Font = new GBold();

 

// handler

stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick);

 

function handleClick(e:MouseEvent):void

{

    useBold = !useBold;

    tf.bold = useBold;

    tf.font = useBold ? gBoldFont.fontName : gRegFont.fontName;

 

    myTLFTextField.setTextFormat(tf, 17, myTLFTextField.length);

}

 

// TLFTextField init

var myTLFTextField:TLFTextField = new TLFTextField();

addChild(myTLFTextField);

myTLFTextField.x = 10;

myTLFTextField.y = 10;

myTLFTextField.width = 400;

myTLFTextField.height = 100;

myTLFTextField.text = "This is my text: This is affected by format";

 

var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat(gRegFont.fontName,16,0x0,false);

myTLFTextField.setTextFormat(tf,0,myTLFTextField.length);

If I don't initially speecify a range on my setTextFormat() I was getting an oddity but it was fixed by always specifying a start/end index which is why my initial set does that.

Click the stage and a portion of the text goes back and forth between Bold and Regular, no CSS needed.

For the record I also did it with a regular flash.text.TextField. just change the class from TLFTextField to TextField and import flash.text.TextField. Works just fine as well.

I know what you mean, the outlines embedded should be thicker because we "think" it's embedding the fonts as 2 separate classes. I don't think it's this simple internally. You can see in the font manager it groups fonts variants (regular/bold/italic all under the same font name). Internally it's actually keeping track.

This is actually behavior I don't mind. My example was more complex than it needed to be. I like when fonts just map properly and actually all you need to do is set the .bold flag and it will automatically use the bold version of the font that's embedded. That tells me they're internally linked.

e.g.:

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import fl.text.TLFTextField;

import flash.text.AntiAliasType;

import flash.text.Font;

import flash.text.TextFormat;

 

var useBold:Boolean = false;

 

// fonts

 

var gRegFont:Font = new GRegular();

 

// handler

 

stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick);

 

function handleClick(e:MouseEvent):void

{

    useBold = !useBold;

 

    // fix Flash's desire to mass-apply, set twice

    tf.bold = false;

    myTLFTextField.setTextFormat(tf, 0, 16);

 

   // now handle bolding

    tf.bold = useBold;

    myTLFTextField.setTextFormat(tf, 17, myTLFTextField.length);

}

 

// TLFTextField init

var myTLFTextField:TLFTextField = new TLFTextField();

 

addChild(myTLFTextField);

myTLFTextField.x = 10;

myTLFTextField.y = 10;

myTLFTextField.width = 400;

myTLFTextField.height = 100;

myTLFTextField.embedFonts = true;

myTLFTextField.antiAliasType = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;

myTLFTextField.text = "This is my text: This is affected by format";

 

var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat(gRegFont.fontName,16,0x0,false);

 

myTLFTextField.setTextFormat(tf,0,myTLFTextField.length);

I don't even need to set the .font property at all. Internally it's linked and that works fine. I'm not even instantiating the bolded version, it's precompiled and available. I also forgot to set embedFont=true and some antialiasing but it works if you do or don't anyhow.

Edit:

Haha I see you were editing your post too. I think we're both on the same page seeing we said the same exact thing. Although I do need to set the non-bold TextFormat like I did setting from char 0-16 or the entire TextField (or TLFTextField) goes to bold. Setting both formats every time fixes the issue. I don't even need to keep setting a font, it's already saved in the formatting object. I just turn bold on and off.