What's a good way to dynamically set text/9patch for popups?

I have a spritefont and 9patch object that I want to use for mouse-hover popups everywhere in the game. Since I will have many different pieces of text (some small, some long) I want to be able to resize the 9patch on-the-fly.

spritefonts have a size, and wrap by word/char base on the width. I have a maxwidth and height for game resolution.

I'm not sure about how to resize the spritefont based on string length. I assume I need to know the longest char width with is a "W"..but that might not be right, since I do use a couple of spacing data values.

anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

dropbox.com/s/27unvmlyopghgu6/hoveHelpF.c3p

You need to use Spritefont.TextWidth and Spritefont.TextHeight expressions. Set text to the spritefont, then resize the 9patch using those expressions.

dop2000 I originally played around with those but didn't have much success. I think the main issue is I have to resize the spritefont object to accommodate the text first.. I think that is the first part that needs to happen.