Good ehh... morning? It's 4:30am here, lol...

But, I've got a few questions. First and foremost, is how to edit a text/string like it's done in standard Windows programs. I've been using inkey(string);, however it is more akin to editing text in DOS or on a really old computer. You can't highlight or select text with the mouse, cut, copy, or even paste. I'm sure I could write my own functions to do things like copy and paste, but I don't know how to select text/characters with the mouse to begin with.

I've also got another question, and I guess I'll have to explain what the goal is to ask it. I'm doing a side project to make a decent messenger/chat application. I want to have the text editing functionality like mentioned above, with a few other things. I want it so that when a user sends a message to the server, it is displayed on the screen after the user's name (I can do this part). I want to set a maximum of 2, maybe 3 lines of text per message. After a certain number of characters, it needs to skip to the next line (probably 100-150 characters per line, and max of 200-300 per message). Furthermore, as messages come in, they are displayed in a descending order, one after another. There should be a maximum of visible messages in the window, maybe 50 or so. After that limit is reached, the oldest message is erased to make room for newer ones.

Yes, I know that's a lot of info all at once, heheh. I can handle all of the basic stuff... making windows, buttons, whatever. But I scoured the manual for information on how to do some of these things and came up with nothing. inkey() was about the only thing I can see, and it's not the best choice for what I need to do. It's decent for entering the IP address and username, but I don't feel it will cut it for the actual message box.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I just can't find this stuff in the manual....

Hmmm... No ideas? I hope this doesn't seem like I'm asking for someone to do it for me, lol. I'm really just hoping someone can give me the general idea, point me to a tut or manual entry, or even give a little snippet of pseudo-code for one or more objectives I'm after.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have to jump to C++ to do this. I'm sure this stuff can be done through Windows OS functions, but I don't know how to call these in Lite-C. Couldn't find it in the manual anywhere.

Guess the lack of response means no one's ever tried this, or knows how, heheh. Maybe you can't do it with Lite-C and standard instructions period? I guess I'll have to finish this with inkey(), and then do an improved version later in C++ or something. Too bad if so... I love how quick and concise Lite-C is... It's really a wonderful language.

It's really a side project to test the native A7 networking abilities (which I hear leave much to be desired). Our WWII sim is on hold right now while I'm waiting for the new artwork, so I wanted to do this in the meantime.

Well, thanks anyway I guess... I'll post again if I resolve the issues...

You need not to permanently ask why you dont get responses, not all people watch the forum 24/7 so it may take a day or two.

For editing text you have the choice to either use inkey, thats a predefined simple editor, or to use inchar, then you can write the editing functions yourself in lite-C. For instance you can check the last key and then delete or insert characters or move a cursor character and so on.

But if you want to edit the text like in a text editor then you need a Windows Editbox. Thats using the Windows API and you can probably get better info on a Windows forum, at least I have not yet used a Windows Editbox. If its MFC you probably need to write a plugin, if its not MFC you can probably still do it in lite-C.

What? Lol. I'm not sure what it means to "permanently ask", but I think you've misjudged what I actually meant. I'm not sitting here groaning because no one answered. People normally don't answer questions they don't know the answer to. I've never seen someone use anything like a Windows edit box in a Lite-C program, and I found no questions like mine in the forums. It's not exactly a "common" occurrence. It was about 2 days now, so I assumed no one has tried this before, or at least recently. And so far that appears to be a very reasonable assessment. That seemed like a sort of rude/condescending statement, but maybe I'm mistaken...

But thanks for the info anyway. I was thinking I'd have to access Windows API somehow to do this properly. I'm glad to know that I may be able to do it in Lite-C, so I might not have to rewrite the whole thing in C++ (which can get ugly if I work too fast, heheh). I actually think I've got a tutorial on Windows programming for text fields and this sort of thing somewhere on my PC. I'm going to hunt for it. If I can find it, I might be able to "convert" it over to Lite-C. I've adapted C and C++ programs and commands to Lite-C before. I recently did it with an encryption/decryption program that encodes and decodes text with a special key (really cool program :D). I could probably even chop that code down, include it in this app, and use it to encrypt data.

But anyway, I'll continue looking into this. If I can get this to work well, I'll definitely share the code and info on it with everyone. I think that could open up a lot of possibilities for Lite-C programming. It would even be cool to see this sort of feature made into a native A7 feature in the future.

Thanks again, and if anyone else has info, I'm eager to hear!

use str_width() for the line breaks. if you use str_length (which returns the number of characters) and you're working with true type fonts then lines will have different lengths on screen because an m is longer than an l, so 5 lllll will be much shorter than 5 mmmmmm. str_width will let you cut the line where you want it.
What you're trying to do will be quite some work. I wrote my chat with a scrolling text struct which consists of Text objects (one per line) so that I can color ever line a different color (in case multiple people chat). The line break is a pain as well, because usually text fields don't break after a set width but after the last word that fully fits into the line.
So I'd say use every shortcut you can.
The inchar function sounds very interesting though. i have no idea how you'd do the text selecting though...

Good luck. and use str_width.

text selection and highlighting with the mouse could be tricky but the rest is easy to do with draw_text() and your own input functions. it wouldn't work better in c++ either.

you can't use mfc controls in a directx window.

maybe you could use some external directx gui system like cegui or something. i think there also are some directx gui widgets included in the directx sdk but i don't know if there is anything useful for text editing.

Ok, thanks guys. I'm going to see what I can do with it now.

"you can't use mfc controls in a directx window."

I did not even think about that. Thanks for mentioning. This is going to be pretty tricky then I guess. I have one cool idea though. Maybe I could make a separate, free floating text box inside it's own little window, where the user can type/edit text freely, like in a standard windows program. Then hitting the "Send" button, or pressing enter could pass the string to the main application? That may be more trouble than it's even worth though. Just a thought. I think it could be pretty cool though, especially with a feature to dock/undock it from the main window, drag it around, etc.

I know I COULD do this copy/paste thing, in an extremely complicated way; maybe by getting the mouse_pos vector when the button is clicked, measuring where it is dragged to before it's release, and then determining which characters in TEXT objects should highlight, and so on... But that really seems ridiculous for a small project like this. I'm trying not to make it too outrageous. Plus, I'd probably go and do all of that, then find out there was a very easy way to do it that I overlooked (happens to me often!).

I'll also look at the stuff in the SDK and see if anything fits the bill. I think this will be really cool if I can get it done!

Heya,

I've created what you've explained so it acn be done.

str_width I've not tested yet but it might be able to achieve what you need for limiting string lengths (if it doesn't you'll need to calculate every character length in pixels for the font you're supporting)

create a TEXT* for displaying the lines
create a function for creating each line
for i < txt.strings txt.pstring[0] = str_create("")
create a function for writing a new line
for i < txt.strings txt.pstring[i+1] = txt.pstring[i]
txt.pstring[0] = new_string
create a blue bmap for the cursor the height of the text and 1pixel wide
create a PANEL* for for placing behind the text where the user will click to type

create 2 variables for storing the cursors start_position and selection_position
then the cursor position will be all the characters in the string combined width, from the cursor start_position to the selection_position

hope this gives you a pointer, and yes it's definately possible though you'll need to add to every other function
if!(new_inkey) or something similar

i never did find a way to check for capslock tho

Thanks,

That's probably the way I'll end up doing it. I found an example of simple chat made by Michael Schwarz? I think that's who it was. I adapted it to Lite-C, but it doesn't work. It doesn't send the string to the server, nor to clients for some reason. I guess I'd better take that to the MP section. But the code does move text on the screen correctly, IF it can be made to work. I tried writing my own in Lite-C from the start, and it doesn't work either.