Blinking text in RichEdit control

[Eros Olmi]

A user of my programming language has asked me if it would be possible to add blinking text into richedit control.

As far as I know and reading MS documentation at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...05(VS.85).aspx it seems not possible.

Can someone confirm it?

Thanks in advance
Eros

[Michael Mattias]

There is no "video attribute" for blinking, but there is nothing to stop you from using a timer to blink text yourself. Nothing other than the fact it will be a PITA to code, test and debug, that is.

(Unless the entire control contents are to blink, in which case it would probably not be too bad to do.... although I sure would not want to be the poor guy who is trying to edit that blinking text...... )

MCM

[Eros Olmi]

Request comes from a user that has developed an interactive fiction system called TAB: http://tab.thinbasic.com/
You know that software that permits to develop text interactive stories to be played.

Application consists of 2 main project: the story editor and the story player. Story Player has as main control a RichEdit control in which the story flow while the player goes on in the drama sending commands like: go north, look, take that object, use object, look at the window, ...


ScreenShot:

I've developed a personalized RichEdit that is very simple to be used and permits to use BBC codes to format output. More or less like what happen in forum posts. So user has a function like:

 
RTF_APPENDTEXT( hwnd, %id_richedit, "[B]this is some text in bold [/B]with [flash]flashing[/flash] text in it", %RTF_UBB )

It allows formatting of font, size, bcolors and fcolors, styles, ...

Blinking text is just a little part decided by the author of the story.
Control can scroll many pages up/down depending on the story.
If blinking is not native, I cannot keep track of all the blinking text using a timer, too much work I suppose for such a feature.

Anyhow thanks
Eros

[Michael Mattias]

Interesting picture.

I'm not into those kinds of games, but I need to thank you for reminding me the opera is next Saturday night. It's Mozart's Magic Flute, which was one of the first operas I attended when the Milwaukee Florentine Opera Company presented it in 1999 or 2000.

It's a good one and one of the reasons I've been a Florentine season ticketholder ever since.

Then again, when did Mozart ever write anything bad?

MCM

[Eros Olmi]

So, ... have a nice time
Nothing better than some classic music to regenerate the spirit.

[Gösta H. Lovgren-2]

Nothing better than some classic music to regenerate the spirit.

Or Elvis Presley, or Check Berry, or Pinetop Smith, or Blind Lemon Jefferson, or ...

========================================
"Make everything as simple as possible,
but not simpler."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
========================================

[Walt Thompson]

Or Elvis Presley, or Check Berry, or Pinetop Smith, or Blind Lemon Jefferson, or ...

Hi Gösta;
Perhaps you meant Chuck Berry?

[Eros Olmi]

[Dominic Mitchell]

The Text Object Model(TOM) supports animation(blinking background etc.). The model is supported by the
IRichEditOle interface of the rich edit control. Unfortunately, as the following quote from MSDN shows, the
control does not implement all aspects of the model.

The rich edit control is able to accept and return all ITextFont properties intact, that is, without modification,
both through TOM and through its Rich Text Format (RTF) converters. However, it cannot display the All Caps,
Animation, Embossed, Imprint, Shadow, Small Caps, Hidden, Kerning, Outline, and Style font properties.

If it did, you would be able to use low-level COM code similar to the following to implement blinking text.

 
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FUNCTION Form1_TextBtn1_Clicked _
  ( _
  BYVAL hWndParent  AS DWORD, _ ' handle of parent window
  BYVAL hWndCtrl    AS DWORD _  ' handle of control
  ) AS LONG

  ' Text Object Model (TOM)
  LOCAL riid          AS GUID
  LOCAL pUnk          AS DWORD
  LOCAL pDoc          AS DWORD
  LOCAL pRange        AS DWORD
  LOCAL pFont         AS DWORD
  LOCAL pFontDup      AS DWORD
  LOCAL cp1           AS LONG
  LOCAL cp2           AS LONG
  LOCAL hr            AS LONG

  ' User
  LOCAL hWndEdit      AS DWORD

  hWndEdit = GetDlgItem(hWndParent, %IDC_FORM1_RICHEDIT1)

  cp1 = 0
  cp2 = 4

  IF SendMessage(hWndEdit, %EM_GETLINECOUNT, 0, 0) THEN
    ' Get a pointer to the IRichEditOle interface
    IF SendMessage(hWndEdit, %EM_GETOLEINTERFACE, 0, BYVAL VARPTR(pUnk)) THEN
      riid = $IID_ITEXTDOCUMENT
      hr = IUnknown_QueryInterface(pUnk, riid, pDoc)
      IF hr = %S_OK THEN
        ' If range is not empty
        IF cp1 <> cp2 THEN
          hr = ITextDocument_Range(pDoc, cp1, cp2, pRange)
          IF hr = %S_OK THEN
            hr = ITextRange_GetFont(pRange, pFont)
            IF hr = %S_OK THEN
              ' Duplicate the font
              hr = ITextFont_GetDuplicate(pFont, pFontDup)
              IF hr = %S_OK THEN 
                ITextFont_SetBackColor pFontDup, &H00FF00FF
                ITextFont_SetBold pFontDup, %TOMTRUE
                ITextFont_SetAnimation(pFontDup, %TOMBLINKINGBACKGROUND)
                ITextRange_SetFont pRange, pFontDup
                IUnknown_Release pFontDup
              END IF
              IUnknown_Release pFont
            END IF
            IUnknown_Release pRange
          END IF
        END IF
        IUnknown_Release pDoc
      END IF
      IUnknown_Release pUnk
    END IF
  END IF

END FUNCTION

Your other option is to use a timer.

[Eros Olmi]

Thanks a lot Dominic but where can I find all requested TOM functions?

[Eros Olmi]

Ok, I found José TypeLib 2.04 that produced an interface file very close to what I need to test your code.

Thanks
Eros

[Eros Olmi]

I was able to implement your suggestion but, as you noted, it does not support animations. Background and bold is correctly changing, animation is not applied.

Thanks in any case.
Eros

[Eros Olmi]

So, if RIchEdit does not support such animations, what MS control support them?

[Dominic Mitchell]

The short answer is none. You should be able to use the DHTML edit or WebBrowser control to do it, but you probably do not want to go that route.

Keep in mind that the rich edit control tracks the animation state even though it does not implement animation. This means that it might be possible to implement blinking using the EM_SETCHARFORMAT/EM_GETCHARFORMAT messages and a timer.

[Eros Olmi]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I've already implemented WebBrowser control in thinBasic programming language with success thanks to José Roca help: http://community.thinbasic.com/index.php?topic=2583.0

I already suggested to thinBasic user asking for blinking text to use WebBrowser control instead of RichEdit but it is not worth for the moment to make such a switch in his application just for blinking text. His thinBasic application is already more that 13000 lines.

We will see.

Thanks again. I've learned a new interface (TOM) that I was not aware.
Eros

[Cliff Nichols]

It may not be Impossible Eros,

Your question got me thinking about a "Back-Burner" idea I had when I wrote RTF made Easy for RichEdit in the source code forums

Not so easy since I wrote it back in January, but here it is April, and at least I did a good thing and made each function obvious enough that I can reverse-engineer and re-learn quickly what I forgot (rather than the tons of time it took to learn it) so I do not have to re-learn it.

I am the 1st one to admit that I know nothing about RichEdit, and its possibilities but if the image shows what I am guessing, is it RTF commands that change color and high lite???

If so, then I may be on my way to showing a possible way to make the high lite actually flash.
(May be a hack, may be the way it was meant to flash) but that is another matter

[Dominic Mitchell]

The font formatting RTF control word that you would be looking for is described in the
following excerpt from the RTF specification.

Control Word    Meaning
-----------------------------------------
\animtextN      Animated text properties 
                0 (none)
                1 Las Vegas Lights
                2 Blinking Background
                3 Sparkle Text
                4 Marching Black Ants
                5 Marching Red Ants
                6 Shimmer
                7 Wipe down
                8 Wipe right