Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
2012/5/16 Mark Morgan Lloyd : > Does anybody have any suggestions for a component to display status or > terminal text for simulating a terminal with SynEdit you might also find this helpful: https://github.com/prof7bit/HaskellTool/tree/master/src in console.pas there is a TConsole that you just create and give it a reference to the synedit. It currently has the ghci executable hardcoded into it but this could also be a shell or some other interactive command interpreter. In main.pas I just create an instance of it and pass a reference to the right hand side synedit to it and then it takes full control over this synedit and works pretty much on its own. This does NOT solve the coloring problem (the highlighter that is also contained in these sources is attached only to the edits on the left side and is a conventional very simple highlighter for haskell syntax). What it does do is demonstrating that simulating an interactive command prompt with TSynEdit is not so difficult at all. -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote: Mark Morgan Lloyd schrieb: I assume you have a fixed amount of lines and columns? If so it should be very simple to write a pos-highlighter (part of your project, does not need to be registerred in IDE), that has CharAttributes: Array[1..maxLine] of array [ 1..MaxColumn] of TAttribute Of course that is not practical if you have thousands of lines, as it would require a lot of storage Since it's emulating a mechanical terminal that printed to roll paper, the number of lines is indeterminate and increasing. I suppose that I could limit it to (say) 1000, but if other people started using it there'd be bound to be somebody complain. Have you ever seen a roll of paper, of indeterminate length? ;-) Yes. I've also seen all sort of printer problems which can cause the number of lines that will fit on a piece- let alone a roll- of paper by 100%. And a mechanical terminal with multi-color ribbon? [Well, I've seen a black/red ribbon many years ago...] Yes. And more to the point, the terminal that I'm emulating /specifically/ has a black/red ribbon which is used in a definite way- as shown on the link I posted. -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Martin Schreiber wrote: On Wednesday 16 May 2012 19:37:16 Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: It sounds like a lot of work, shoehorning something which isn't really its forte into Synedit. Before anything more, I'll drop a note to Cmdline's author (if he's not in here already) and see if he's got any suggestions. Otherwise, can anybody say whether are there any stringgrid derivatives etc. that will do this? It probably will not help you but MSEgui has "tterminal" for the purpose. It is based on the "tcustomtextedit" widget. "tcustomtextedit" and its descendents (ttextedit, tundotextedit, tsyntaxedit, tterminal...) should be placed into a "twidgetgrid" and builds a text editor column in the grid. The underlying cell datatype is "richstringty", a UnicodeString with per character font style and color info. tterminal can start processes and read and write pipes. Doesn't help but is worth knowing ;-) -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
On Wednesday 16 May 2012 19:37:16 Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: > > It sounds like a lot of work, shoehorning something which isn't really > its forte into Synedit. > > Before anything more, I'll drop a note to Cmdline's author (if he's not > in here already) and see if he's got any suggestions. > > Otherwise, can anybody say whether are there any stringgrid derivatives > etc. that will do this? It probably will not help you but MSEgui has "tterminal" for the purpose. It is based on the "tcustomtextedit" widget. "tcustomtextedit" and its descendents (ttextedit, tundotextedit, tsyntaxedit, tterminal...) should be placed into a "twidgetgrid" and builds a text editor column in the grid. The underlying cell datatype is "richstringty", a UnicodeString with per character font style and color info. tterminal can start processes and read and write pipes. Martin -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Mark Morgan Lloyd schrieb: I assume you have a fixed amount of lines and columns? If so it should be very simple to write a pos-highlighter (part of your project, does not need to be registerred in IDE), that has CharAttributes: Array[1..maxLine] of array [ 1..MaxColumn] of TAttribute Of course that is not practical if you have thousands of lines, as it would require a lot of storage Since it's emulating a mechanical terminal that printed to roll paper, the number of lines is indeterminate and increasing. I suppose that I could limit it to (say) 1000, but if other people started using it there'd be bound to be somebody complain. Have you ever seen a roll of paper, of indeterminate length? ;-) And a mechanical terminal with multi-color ribbon? [Well, I've seen a black/red ribbon many years ago...] DoDi -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Martin wrote: On 16/05/2012 16:32, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Since it's emulating a mechanical terminal that printed to roll paper, the number of lines is indeterminate and increasing. I suppose that I could limit it to (say) 1000, but if other people started using it there'd be bound to be somebody complain. I see. Same also applies to any onscreen display of scrolling status etc., except that it doesn't have the same insertion-point requirement. Still possible (at least I think) Highlighter stores something called a range for each line (line as in textbuffer lines, so scrolling of display does not matter) They are automatically adjusted if lines are added/inserted/removed from/to the textbuffer So you could write a HL, that stores a list of x-positions for each line, together with the attributes. (If you edit the line itself, you need to adjust the list) The highlighter can then return the text, cut into "tokens" (in your case each continuous group of chars with the same attributes), and supply the attributes for each token. By default the "Range" is not freed, when the line is dropped (e.g. if it is an enum or set, then just the memory is dropped). But the highlighter allows to override that code, so it can be added. Depends how interested you are. I can assist, and help put together the framework, but you'll have to implement the rest. It sounds like a lot of work, shoehorning something which isn't really its forte into Synedit. Before anything more, I'll drop a note to Cmdline's author (if he's not in here already) and see if he's got any suggestions. Otherwise, can anybody say whether are there any stringgrid derivatives etc. that will do this? -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
On 16/05/2012 16:32, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
Since it's emulating a mechanical terminal that printed to roll paper,
the number of lines is indeterminate and increasing. I suppose that I
could limit it to (say) 1000, but if other people started using it
there'd be bound to be somebody complain.
I see.
Still possible (at least I think)
Highlighter stores something called a range for each line (line as in
textbuffer lines, so scrolling of display does not matter)
They are automatically adjusted if lines are added/inserted/removed
from/to the textbuffer
So you could write a HL, that stores a list of x-positions for each
line, together with the attributes. (If you edit the line itself, you
need to adjust the list)
The highlighter can then return the text, cut into "tokens" (in your
case each continuous group of chars with the same attributes), and
supply the attributes for each token.
By default the "Range" is not freed, when the line is dropped (e.g. if
it is an enum or set, then just the memory is dropped).
But the highlighter allows to override that code, so it can be added.
Depends how interested you are.
I can assist, and help put together the framework, but you'll have to
implement the rest.
Also to get the memory to be freed (using dynamic array for ranges), it
touches a few internal methods. I do not foresee that they will change,
but
--
If you look at the 1st example from the tutorial ("SimpleHl").
As I said the ranges move with the lines. And I can make it possible
that you can store a dynamic array (actually pointer to dyn array) as
range, and that it will be freed, if a line is removed.
The array could be something like
TLinePosArray = Array of record
XPos, NumChar: Smallint; // assuming a max line length
Attr: TSynHighlighterAttributes; // could alse be an enum, that you
map later
end;
PLinePosArray = ^TLinePosArray;
The rest should be self-explaining from the tutorial.
--
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Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Paul Breneman wrote: Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Does anybody have any suggestions for a component to display status or terminal text that will allow limited enhancement (colour, possibly underline etc.)? Over the last few weeks I've been tinkering with an emulator for an obsolete mechanical terminal (IBM 2741), including support for the APL character set. I started off using a listbox for simple output, noting that this didn't have provision for multiple colours or marking the insertion point. I moved on to stuffing characters into a memo, this allowed me to force a current-position marker but still had no colour. Looking at the CmdLine component, it appears OK as a command window (i.e. accepting keyboard input etc.) but isn't so hot when the principal requirement is to display text pushed into the underlying strings storage from elsewhere: in particular, there isn't a way to force the insertion point marker to the end of what's just been output. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants to do this sort of thing: does anybody have any recommendations? Mark, I don't have any recommendations but I'm following this message thread with much interest. Last fall I wrote a "serial debug terminal" with Free Pascal and fpGUI and that program has proved to be one of the most useful simple programs I've written in a long time. I've customized it a few times already for real work projects and I also have some other projects planned. If you want to see how simple the present code is see the "DbgTerm.pas" program at this page: http://www.turbocontrol.com/easyfpgui.htm I think that almost everybody who has to deal with non-modem equipment or who has demanding modem requirements (e.g. accommodate a mix of incoming and outgoing calls and/or obscure protocols) ends up doing the same. Something that's particularly badly handled in off-the-shelf software is control-line handling (DTR, CD etc.). Right now you can't put the cursor in the terminal and send characters by typing them, but rather there are separate SendEdit and SendButton components. I'd like to implement a more standard "terminal" operation so what you are discussing here applies to that. In my case, I'm collecting keydown events from whatever the visible control is, converting them to an internal code (derived from the mechanics of the original 2741 terminal), (local echo done here), converting that to characters for the serial interface, and finally sending those to a serial line or telnet connection. Received data (which might be coded differently from what was transmitted) is converted to the internal code, written to the same queue that got the local echo, the content of which is finally converted to Unicode using a table that mimics an IBM golfball and stuffed into the stringlist that underlies the listbox or memo control. A listbox does not have a caret marking the insertion point. A memo does, and I can generally force that to indicate the position the next keypress will appear after each character is output. Obviously that can be confused by a mouse click, but since I'm not using the control's own keyboard handler the next output character will always appear in the right place. I'm sure all this isn't very efficient, but I am, after all, emulating the terminal that gave the World 134.5 Baud operation :-) I'd like to keep the present DbgTerm as a very simple example of serial communications code but I will consider having a more complex terminal program too. I've run into many people who need a replacement for HyperTerminal since it has been gone from Vista and later Windows editions. For Windows I'd point you at Teraterm, of which v1 was Pascal if you think you need to tinker. For Linux gtkterm. -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Martin wrote: On 16/05/2012 14:13, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Martin wrote: The normal way (see example): // Line 0, from start of line to pos 3 (3 chars) highlighted as Attr1 Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); but this will do a single char Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); // Attr1 from col 3 Highlighter.AddToken(0,4,tkText); // text from col 4 I don't think any sort of pre-existing custom highlighter will work. The requirement here is that anything- completely context-free- that the user enters is red, anything that the host supplies (over telnet, serial line etc.) is black. Either of those can be complete garbage, but should still show up in the correct colour (and should stay correct, irrespective of scrolling etc.). The position highlighter refers to position in text. Scrolling via scrollbar is no problem. But if you add/remove lines; or add/remove chars in a line, you must update the positions. I assume you have a fixed amount of lines and columns? If so it should be very simple to write a pos-highlighter (part of your project, does not need to be registerred in IDE), that has CharAttributes: Array[1..maxLine] of array [ 1..MaxColumn] of TAttribute Of course that is not practical if you have thousands of lines, as it would require a lot of storage Since it's emulating a mechanical terminal that printed to roll paper, the number of lines is indeterminate and increasing. I suppose that I could limit it to (say) 1000, but if other people started using it there'd be bound to be somebody complain. -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
On 16/05/2012 14:13, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Martin wrote: The normal way (see example): // Line 0, from start of line to pos 3 (3 chars) highlighted as Attr1 Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); but this will do a single char Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); // Attr1 from col 3 Highlighter.AddToken(0,4,tkText); // text from col 4 I don't think any sort of pre-existing custom highlighter will work. The requirement here is that anything- completely context-free- that the user enters is red, anything that the host supplies (over telnet, serial line etc.) is black. Either of those can be complete garbage, but should still show up in the correct colour (and should stay correct, irrespective of scrolling etc.). The position highlighter refers to position in text. Scrolling via scrollbar is no problem. But if you add/remove lines; or add/remove chars in a line, you must update the positions. I assume you have a fixed amount of lines and columns? If so it should be very simple to write a pos-highlighter (part of your project, does not need to be registerred in IDE), that has CharAttributes: Array[1..maxLine] of array [ 1..MaxColumn] of TAttribute Of course that is not practical if you have thousands of lines, as it would require a lot of storage In practice (in this particular project) I'm stuffing characters directly into the items/lines property (of whichever output component I'm using). In other words I'm not using any of the component's own keyboard handling, the reason is that there are several stages of translation in between the user pressing a key and it being printed. SynEdit has a read only property. But that still allows selection and moving the caret. If needed it can be configured to ignore all user input (the previews in the IDE option do that). That is srollbars can always be scrolled... -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Does anybody have any suggestions for a component to display status or terminal text that will allow limited enhancement (colour, possibly underline etc.)? Over the last few weeks I've been tinkering with an emulator for an obsolete mechanical terminal (IBM 2741), including support for the APL character set. I started off using a listbox for simple output, noting that this didn't have provision for multiple colours or marking the insertion point. I moved on to stuffing characters into a memo, this allowed me to force a current-position marker but still had no colour. Looking at the CmdLine component, it appears OK as a command window (i.e. accepting keyboard input etc.) but isn't so hot when the principal requirement is to display text pushed into the underlying strings storage from elsewhere: in particular, there isn't a way to force the insertion point marker to the end of what's just been output. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants to do this sort of thing: does anybody have any recommendations? Mark, I don't have any recommendations but I'm following this message thread with much interest. Last fall I wrote a "serial debug terminal" with Free Pascal and fpGUI and that program has proved to be one of the most useful simple programs I've written in a long time. I've customized it a few times already for real work projects and I also have some other projects planned. If you want to see how simple the present code is see the "DbgTerm.pas" program at this page: http://www.turbocontrol.com/easyfpgui.htm Right now you can't put the cursor in the terminal and send characters by typing them, but rather there are separate SendEdit and SendButton components. I'd like to implement a more standard "terminal" operation so what you are discussing here applies to that. I'd like to keep the present DbgTerm as a very simple example of serial communications code but I will consider having a more complex terminal program too. I've run into many people who need a replacement for HyperTerminal since it has been gone from Vista and later Windows editions. -- Regards, Paul Breneman www.dbReplication.com - VCL database replication components www.TurboControl.com - Hardware and software development services - Educational programming project for environment monitoring - Information on using FreePascal for embedded systems - Support information for the TurboPower open source libraries -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Martin wrote: On 16/05/2012 13:24, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Martin wrote: TSynEdit? TSynPosSyn (position highlighter, see examples) Do you mean that that can now colour arbitrary sequences of characters (i.e. what you'd expect from a terminal emulator), rather than having to define things in advance? As an example, see http://wotho.ethz.ch/APL-1130/2741_APL_Demo.png where everything the user enters (which starts at the 7th column) is printed in red. Yes, though it may be a bit tedious to add. The normal way (see example): // Line 0, from start of line to pos 3 (3 chars) highlighted as Attr1 Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); but this will do a single char Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); // Attr1 from col 3 Highlighter.AddToken(0,4,tkText); // text from col 4 It may be easier to write a custom highlighter - there is a tutorial http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/SynEdit_Highlighter#Creating_a_SynEdit_Highlighter samples are also in the example folder (SVN). I assume you have a fixed amount of lines and columns? It should be easy to have it an array of attributes matching each char in each line. Whatever you do: make sure to switch off the removal of trailing spaces (or you can not highlight them...) There is a property(IIRC Options) Being able to use a standard component would definitely be an advantage, since particularly for this project I am very keen on a user with limited (or no) Pascal experience simply being able to grab the sources and a copy of Lazarus and compile. But I must also ask: how long has TSynedit done this? It does appear to be one of the more fluid parts of the LCL and I'm afraid I'm a bit wary... The pos highlighter has always been there. What do you mean more fluid? ... I don't think any sort of pre-existing custom highlighter will work. The requirement here is that anything- completely context-free- that the user enters is red, anything that the host supplies (over telnet, serial line etc.) is black. Either of those can be complete garbage, but should still show up in the correct colour (and should stay correct, irrespective of scrolling etc.). (btw: SynEdit is not part of the LCL. And in is MPL/GPL at your choice, as that is what the original SynEdit is) OK, but in effect it comes as standard which makes it attractive. SynEdit had a few changes ( http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_0.99.0_release_notes#SynEdit ) I tried to get them in before 1.0, hence so many so sudden... But most of them should not need user changes. folding highlighters, if you wrote your own, might still be subject to change (so I hope it will not be needed, the latest change should do). That is because folding still has a lot of changes... But the basic highlighter should not need to change. The internal representation of the Textbuffer, and it's Views will change. But that should not affect any one... In practice (in this particular project) I'm stuffing characters directly into the items/lines property (of whichever output component I'm using). In other words I'm not using any of the component's own keyboard handling, the reason is that there are several stages of translation in between the user pressing a key and it being printed. -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
On 16/05/2012 13:24, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Martin wrote: TSynEdit? TSynPosSyn (position highlighter, see examples) Do you mean that that can now colour arbitrary sequences of characters (i.e. what you'd expect from a terminal emulator), rather than having to define things in advance? As an example, see http://wotho.ethz.ch/APL-1130/2741_APL_Demo.png where everything the user enters (which starts at the 7th column) is printed in red. Yes, though it may be a bit tedious to add. The normal way (see example): // Line 0, from start of line to pos 3 (3 chars) highlighted as Attr1 Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); but this will do a single char Highlighter.AddToken(0,3,Attr1); // Attr1 from col 3 Highlighter.AddToken(0,4,tkText); // text from col 4 It may be easier to write a custom highlighter - there is a tutorial http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/SynEdit_Highlighter#Creating_a_SynEdit_Highlighter samples are also in the example folder (SVN). I assume you have a fixed amount of lines and columns? It should be easy to have it an array of attributes matching each char in each line. Whatever you do: make sure to switch off the removal of trailing spaces (or you can not highlight them...) There is a property(IIRC Options) Being able to use a standard component would definitely be an advantage, since particularly for this project I am very keen on a user with limited (or no) Pascal experience simply being able to grab the sources and a copy of Lazarus and compile. But I must also ask: how long has TSynedit done this? It does appear to be one of the more fluid parts of the LCL and I'm afraid I'm a bit wary... The pos highlighter has always been there. What do you mean more fluid? ... (btw: SynEdit is not part of the LCL. And in is MPL/GPL at your choice, as that is what the original SynEdit is) SynEdit had a few changes ( http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_0.99.0_release_notes#SynEdit ) I tried to get them in before 1.0, hence so many so sudden... But most of them should not need user changes. folding highlighters, if you wrote your own, might still be subject to change (so I hope it will not be needed, the latest change should do). That is because folding still has a lot of changes... But the basic highlighter should not need to change. The internal representation of the Textbuffer, and it's Views will change. But that should not affect any one... -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Martin wrote: On 16/05/2012 09:13, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Does anybody have any suggestions for a component to display status or terminal text that will allow limited enhancement (colour, possibly underline etc.)? Over the last few weeks I've been tinkering with an emulator for an obsolete mechanical terminal (IBM 2741), including support for the APL character set. I started off using a listbox for simple output, noting that this didn't have provision for multiple colours or marking the insertion point. I moved on to stuffing characters into a memo, this allowed me to force a current-position marker but still had no colour. Looking at the CmdLine component, it appears OK as a command window (i.e. accepting keyboard input etc.) but isn't so hot when the principal requirement is to display text pushed into the underlying strings storage from elsewhere: in particular, there isn't a way to force the insertion point marker to the end of what's just been output. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants to do this sort of thing: does anybody have any recommendations? TSynEdit? TSynPosSyn (position highlighter, see examples) Do you mean that that can now colour arbitrary sequences of characters (i.e. what you'd expect from a terminal emulator), rather than having to define things in advance? As an example, see http://wotho.ethz.ch/APL-1130/2741_APL_Demo.png where everything the user enters (which starts at the 7th column) is printed in red. Being able to use a standard component would definitely be an advantage, since particularly for this project I am very keen on a user with limited (or no) Pascal experience simply being able to grab the sources and a copy of Lazarus and compile. But I must also ask: how long has TSynedit done this? It does appear to be one of the more fluid parts of the LCL and I'm afraid I'm a bit wary... -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
Re: [Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
On 16/05/2012 09:13, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote: Does anybody have any suggestions for a component to display status or terminal text that will allow limited enhancement (colour, possibly underline etc.)? Over the last few weeks I've been tinkering with an emulator for an obsolete mechanical terminal (IBM 2741), including support for the APL character set. I started off using a listbox for simple output, noting that this didn't have provision for multiple colours or marking the insertion point. I moved on to stuffing characters into a memo, this allowed me to force a current-position marker but still had no colour. Looking at the CmdLine component, it appears OK as a command window (i.e. accepting keyboard input etc.) but isn't so hot when the principal requirement is to display text pushed into the underlying strings storage from elsewhere: in particular, there isn't a way to force the insertion point marker to the end of what's just been output. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants to do this sort of thing: does anybody have any recommendations? TSynEdit? TSynPosSyn (position highlighter, see examples) You can remove all the SynEdit.Keystrokes. And also set it to not react to mouse, if required (use MouseActions and make them empty) You can also set the caret shape, to be a block (full char width). If you want to loose ballast, you can remove various of the "Markup" modules... -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
[Lazarus] Displaying text with colour and insertion point
Does anybody have any suggestions for a component to display status or terminal text that will allow limited enhancement (colour, possibly underline etc.)? Over the last few weeks I've been tinkering with an emulator for an obsolete mechanical terminal (IBM 2741), including support for the APL character set. I started off using a listbox for simple output, noting that this didn't have provision for multiple colours or marking the insertion point. I moved on to stuffing characters into a memo, this allowed me to force a current-position marker but still had no colour. Looking at the CmdLine component, it appears OK as a command window (i.e. accepting keyboard input etc.) but isn't so hot when the principal requirement is to display text pushed into the underlying strings storage from elsewhere: in particular, there isn't a way to force the insertion point marker to the end of what's just been output. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants to do this sort of thing: does anybody have any recommendations? -- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues] -- ___ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
