ANN: FieldGroup - a simple rich text editor field.

[Alex Tweedly]

I'd like to announce the Beta (i.e. v0.1) release of my simple rich text 
field. Currently it's not on Github or anywhere sensible - it's just on 
my own download site (see URL at end of this email).

I'd be happy if anyone finds it useful, and / or has feedback that might 
make it useful.


FieldGroup - a rich text editor field for Livecode.

Actually, as the old joke goes, it's not really "rich" text, just 
comfortably off. :-)

That is, it supports only some fairly basic features compared to a 
fully-featured rich text editor.

Supported features include :
  - multi-level undo/redo
  - 'undo' can be reset (e.g. after 'save', or 'open')
  - set text style of a chunk by tool button or (sample) menu
  - undo includes text style setting
  - simple (enclosed) tool bars with text or icon buttons - optional of 
course.
  - each kind of button comes in two sizes
  - button tool bars in any one of four placements (top,right,bottom,left)
  - view scaling
  - call-backs to let the app know when undo/redo are available (e.g. to 
adjust menus)
  - no front scripts used.

FieldGroup is a standalone group which can be simply copy/paste'd into 
your own stacks, and provides a (moderately) rich set of text field 
features. You can have as many of these fieldgroups as you want - each 
is entirely self-contained.

Easy to use - handlers/functions are well documented and (I hope) 
straightforward to understand and use. The downloadable stack includes 
the group, ready to be copy/pasted, as part of a simple sample app which 
shows common uses.

The handler definitions are included below - this is also available in 
the sample app. The "fill" button ill give you text to play with, but 
shift-Fill will restore this document.

You can download the sample app - which includes the group you ned to 
copy/paste - from

https://www.tweedly.org/downloads/FieldGroupsample.livecode

This popped out from a simple app I'm writing (actually, just starting 
to write) so I'm sure I will realize I need more features, and they will 
be added. However, I do not intend it to grow to an all-singing, 
all-dancing word processor-like field editor - I have no need for one of 
those. But it might be a staring point for someone else who wants that.

-- Alex.

/Handlers/

In general, these handlers are invoked by 'dispatch'ing the message to 
the group. The sample app shows an example of how to structure the menu 
items (edit and Format menus). It also contains examples of manipulating 
the text (the *Exchange* button), showing different configurations of 
the buttons (the *Snap* button, and capturing the return messages for 
undo/redo being available.

/Handlers/

*/fg.init/* pAConfig

Initialize the field, with an optional set of configuration parameters 
(see fg.configChange for details of these).

/dispatch "fg.init" to grp "fldgrp" with "textbuttonsize=large", 
"svgbutton=large"/

*/fg.configChange/* pAConfig

Configure the settings for buttons usage, placement, size, etc.

This can be either an array, with the key/value pairs, or any number of 
parameters each being in the form “key=value”.

Examples:

/put "top" into tA["textbuttons"]//
put "small" into tA["textbuttonsize"]
dispatch "fg.configChange" to grp "fldgrp" with tA/

or

/dispatch "fg.configChange" to grp "fldgrp" with "textbuttons=top", 
"textbuttonsize=large"/

Parameters that can be set are:
- textbuttons : top | bottom
- svgbuttons : top | bottom | right | left
- textbuttonsize : small | large
- svgbuttonsize : small | large
- resizing : true | false (defaults true - if FALSE then the group will 
not adjust for any resizing)

*/fg.version/*

Returns the version of the fieldgroup.

/dispatch function "fg.version" to grp "fldgrp"//
put "Version" && the result &CR into msg
/

/
/

*/fg.getText/* pType

Retrieve the contents of the field.

/dispatch function "fg.getText" to grp "fldgrp" with "styledtext"/

pType is one of
- styledtext (the default) : return the complete styledtext /array
- text : plain text of the field/
- htmlText : htmltext of the field
- rtftext : rtfText of the field

*/fg.resetUndoSystem/*

Resets all undo info, for example if the app does a save, and if it 
determins that the user should ne bot able to'undo' beyond that point, 
then it would call this handler.

/dispatch function "fg.version" to grp "fldgrp"//
put the result into URL ("binfile:savedfile.txt")
dispatch "fg.resetUndoSystem" to grp "fldgrp"/

/
/

*/fg.set.initialText/* pText

Set the initial text for the field (i.e. set the text, an reset the undo 
system).

/put URL ("binfile:" & sFilename) into tText//
put arraydecode(tText) into tA
dispatch "fg.set.initialText" to grp "fldgrp" with tA/

pText can be either an array (in which case it is the styledText to be 
set), or string (of simple text).


*fg.replaceChunk* pChunk, pAText

Replaces the specified chunk of the field with the styledText in the 
array pA.

/dispatch "fg.replaceChunk" to grp "fldgrp" with tChunk, tAText/


*fg.set.textStyle* pStyle, pChunk

Adds / removes the text style to the chunk of the field. If the chunk is 
empty, then the change is applied to the current selection.

/dispatch "fg.set.textStyle" to grp "fldgrp" with "bold"/

Note that if the all of the chunk already has the specified style, then 
it is removed; oitherwise it is added; therefore, if the chunk is 
previously "mixed" then the style is added.

/*fg.set.viewScale* pScale/

Sets the viewing scale for the field. This simply adjusts the textsize, 
since there is no provision for setting the text size of individual 
parts of the field.

/dispatch "fg.set.viewScale" to grp "fldgrp" with "+"/

pScale is one of :
- "-" : make text smaller
- "+" : make text larger
- 0 : reset text to default size
- N (< 6) : is a multiplier from default size, e.g. for apps that offer 
"150%" etc.
- N (> 6): an actual text size.

//

-- end of definitions --