attaching "metadata" to a single character

[Phil Davis]

Josh -

Have you looked at the 'linkText' property? You can set the linkText of a chunk 
to [whatever]. It might work for you.

Phil Davis


Josh Mellicker wrote:
> I have a text field, with blocks of text deliniated with the "\" character.
> 
> I am trying to figure out the best way to attach "metadata" to this 
> character.
> 
> The first thing I thought of is that I could alter the color of the 
> character, that would give me three data values up to 255 each (which 
> would probably be enough, but might look weird). I could use the "blue" 
> value to point to a separate numbered group of data with multiple 
> fields, for example, but this complicates the overall scheme, perhaps 
> needlessly.
> 
> I can't use the position of the character or the order of the delimiters 
> as an absolute, because the user will be typing and deleting in the 
> field, copying and pasting sections of the text, so each "\" character 
> will be moved around quite a bit, but I need it to retain special info.
> 
> I need the character to be visible so the user doesn't accidentally 
> highlight a section, cut it and paste it elsewhere without grabbing the 
> "\" character.
> 
> I might go the direction of experimenting with the htmlText of the 
> field, to see if I can put custom tags in without affecting the display, 
> and see if the tags care copied and pasted properly... but I'm not sure 
> what dangers might arise if I mess with the htmlText too much.
> 
> I need something like custom properties of a single character...
> 
> Ideas?