Modify the color/theme of one word in a Text Widget

[broconne]

Is it possible to change the color/theme of a single word within a text widget?

For example. Lets say I have multiple titles:

"This is a short title"
"This title is a little bit longer"
"This title is even a little bit longer than the last".

All of these lines are inside of a 1-D table.

In each of them, I want to make the word title be a different color. How can I do that in Sage? I can identify which word I want to change the color of in my plugin - but how using studio can I modify the text properties of a single word in a text widget?

[jaminben]

Not quite sure what you mean but it's probably possible. Try taking a look at StringIndexOf() & Substring() and de-constructing the text then building it backup applying different theme widgets to the "title" text compared to the rest of the text.

Thats the only thing that comes to mind at the moment...... not sure how well that would work tho.

[broconne]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Not quite sure what you mean but it's probably possible. Try taking a look at StringIndexOf() & Substring() and de-constructing the text then building it backup applying different theme widgets to the "title" text compared to the rest of the text.

Thats the only thing that comes to mind at the moment...... not sure how well that would work tho.

Yeah - separating the text is not an issue. How does one "build it back up" in studio. What widgets allows me to have text of varying length put together with proper spacing between characters, deal with shrinking text to fit across the whole area.. etc?

The text part I can handle. So I guess the question is:
How in studio can you can take discrete segments of text and put them together so that they look and behave as if they are a single element?

[jaminben]

You could try something like the attached screenshot......but it may not work all that well with shrinking text.

[PLUCKYHD]

I would do it like so using string contains direct in java

if (calltocheckstringforcontains(String)
 >true
     SplitString = Call to sepearte string out
         Call to get First String Element 
               TextWidget
         Call to get Second String Element
                  TextWidget
        If(HasThirdElement)
           Call to get Third String Element
                 TextWidget
            
 >else
   String in action widget
         Text Widget

That is how I would do it split the string. You should have a max of 3 strings and check each element for the match value in the theme.

That should work

[broconne]

Thanks Jaminben and Plucky.

That certainly solves the example I provided. I sort of simplified the example to make it easier to understand.. However, I am not sure if what we are talking about would work with what I am trying to do.

The full problem is that I have N number of regular expressions that will match X number of words in the title. So lets do some more xamples.

N={title}
Title = "The title of the title is in face the title's title"
I would want to appear like
The title of the title is in face the title's title

Example two:
N={title,dog}
Title = "The dog title of dog the title is in face the title's title dog"
I would want to appear like:
The dog title of dog the title is in face the title's title dog

I have no problem identifying in the plugin what I want to color red, but I am unsure how to put it all back together in sage such that its dynamic and can grow to arbitrary title lengths, etc.

[jaminben]

Heh, thats going to be really tricky and pretty much above my pay grade. However I'm thinking of something that may work in a funny sort of way...... how about a table within a table on a per cell basis. So basically you would need to create an array you can feed into a table which is inserted into each cell of the original table. Measure the length of each element marking which need special colors (every other element) then add an If element == even number use special color theme or else use normal color theme for odd element numbers. It wouldn't be too hard to do this on a focused item (as you could do this in green widget code) but I'm guessing if you wanted all cell's to display the different colors from the outset it would become quite intensive on your system.

[PLUCKYHD]

Yeah I gave him that Idea as well ben and think it may be his best option.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Yeah I gave him that Idea as well ben and think it may be his best option.

Ha, so my two year learning curve starting from scratch wasn't a complete waste of time then

[broconne]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Heh, thats going to be really tricky and pretty much above my pay grade. However I'm thinking of something that may work in a funny sort of way...... how about a table within a table on a per cell basis. So basically you would need to create an array you can feed into a table which is inserted into each cell of the original table. Measure the length of each element marking which need special colors (every other element) then add an If element == even number use special color theme or else use normal color theme for odd element numbers. It wouldn't be too hard to do this on a focused item (as you could do this in green widget code) but I'm guessing if you wanted all cell's to display the different colors from the outset it would become quite intensive on your system.

Yeah - when Plucky and I were first talking about this - we discussed table within table. That is what I tried - but I could not get the spacing between the inner tables elements to work.

Its too bad I can't have attributes in the text itself processed by sage...

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by broconne

Yeah - when Plucky and I were first talking about this - we discussed table within table. That is what I tried - but I could not get the spacing between the inner tables elements to work.

Its too bad I can't have attributes in the text itself processed by sage...

If you do it like that sample I showed the spacing will work and build dynamically but still don't know how performance wise it will be.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by broconne

Yeah - when Plucky and I were first talking about this - we discussed table within table. That is what I tried - but I could not get the spacing between the inner tables elements to work.

Its too bad I can't have attributes in the text itself processed by sage...

Take this with a pinch of salt as I'm only guessing but wouldn't the spacing be dynamic...... so leave the cell sizes blank in Studio and manually add a space into the array so spaces appear before each black text element and before every red text element. Not quite sure that makes any sense as I can't even work it out in my head now

I'll shut up now.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Take this with a pinch of salt as I'm only guessing but wouldn't the spacing be dynamic...... so leave the cell sizes blank in Studio and manually add a space into the array so spaces appear before each black text element and after every red text element. Not quite sure that makes any sense as I can't even work it out in my head now

I'll shut up now.

Yeah that is what I was getting at just make the panel horizontal alignment and leave the rest blank and it should be dynamic from there.

[GKusnick]

I don't think you're going to find a good general solution to this. You can break the text down into separate chunks, but the layout rules for adjacent text widgets within an item or panel are not the same as the rules for laying out and word-wrapping text within a single widget. So it's always going to look slightly off compared to normal smooth text flow.

[BobPhoenix]

Could you use GetEmbeddedPanel() and do it all in Java in the AWT panel returned from the call? Just asking because I've never tried it.