Register forum user name Search FAQ

Gammon Forum

Notice: Any messages purporting to come from this site telling you that your password has expired, or that you need to verify your details, confirm your email, resolve issues, making threats, or asking for money, are spam. We do not email users with any such messages. If you have lost your password you can obtain a new one by using the password reset link.

Due to spam on this forum, all posts now need moderator approval.

 Entire forum ➜ MUSHclient ➜ General ➜ Blinking text
Blinking text

It is now over 60 days since the last post. This thread is closed.     Refresh page

Pages: 1 2  

Posted by Zeno   USA  (2,871 posts)  Bio
Date Wed 06 Nov 2002 11:55 PM (UTC)
Message
How do you set it so the text blinks? Its shows Italic instead...
Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy
http://www.biyg.org
Top
Posted by Mademoiselle   Australia  (35 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #1 on Thu 07 Nov 2002 12:08 AM (UTC)
Message
I'm going to hazard a guess that you can't (correct me if I'm wrong here, Nick).

Blinking text is a sonofabitch to implement in win32, which leads me to guess that Nick's used italics to display this, rather than messing around trying to implement blinking.

This is purely speculation though; I don't use mushclient myself (I have my own) so I haven't even had opportunity to hunt around in the options to see if there is such an option hidden somewhere.
Top
Posted by Zeno   USA  (2,871 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #2 on Thu 07 Nov 2002 12:35 AM (UTC)
Message
Yeah, I thought it was hard to code in...
Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy
http://www.biyg.org
Top
Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #3 on Thu 07 Nov 2002 02:44 AM (UTC)
Message
Yes, it is a pest to implement, and it deliberately renders blink as italics.
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
Top
Posted by Zeno   USA  (2,871 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #4 on Thu 07 Nov 2002 07:52 PM (UTC)
Message
Is there anything you could code in to make it different from italics? So I know the difference of whats italic and blinking? That'd be great if you could.
Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy
http://www.biyg.org
Top
Posted by Shadowfyr   USA  (1,791 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #5 on Thu 07 Nov 2002 08:45 PM (UTC)
Message
Yes.. This would be nice.. Sadly there is no 'direct' means to do so. :p Unless you: Replaced it with a different font (may not be visually effective and probaby still causes a problem with fixed width). Used different background/foreground colors (pointless). Etc.. About the only solution that 'could' work would be to use a gradient fill on the letters instead of a solid fill, but this is also not possible. We are after all using Windbloze here and such useful ideas as the MAC's ability to set a fill pattern on 'anything' including fonts has been left out to make things more convenient to somebody (they would like us to believe 'we' are the ones being 'helped' by this...). Unless you can think of some option that can be implimented without recoding the entire truetype font support code in the OS, I am afraid we are stuck with seriously limited options. :p

In general, some attributes like blink, bold, etc. 'cannot' be translated to font attributes with 'expected' results and linking the true font tag effects to those attributes in ANSI has serious design drawbacks. The italics messing with visual spacing being a major one. If the result was the same width it would be acceptable, but short of cropping the letter or trying to change the point size for that bit of blinking text, there is no way to properly use blink=italic and have it work right. :p

However, as I said... No one has as of yet found a viable solution and MS inconveniently failed to provide one.
Top
Posted by Mademoiselle   Australia  (35 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #6 on Fri 08 Nov 2002 12:55 AM (UTC)
Message
> Is there anything you could code in to make it different from italics? So I know the difference of whats italic and blinking? That'd be great if you could.

But ANSI formatting doesn't have an "italic" field. If by some miracle he changed the italic text so it blinks, there would be no more italic text to confuse it with.

At least, so far as I know. I can't find documentation *anywhere* for what to do with values 3 or 6. For all I know one of these may have been recently been "promoted" to italics.

This is my understanding (plus colours, but they're not really relevant to this discussion).

0 Reset all attributes
1 Bright
2 Dim
3
4 Underscore
5 Blink
6
7 Reverse
8 Hidden

Can anyone fill the blanks? I wouldn't be at all surprised if 3 and 6 are "reserved for future expansion".
Top
Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #7 on Fri 08 Nov 2002 01:55 AM (UTC)
Message
3 : italic
5: slow blink
6: rapid blink
9: overstrike

See this file: ftp://ftp.ecma.ch/ecma-st/Ecma-048.pdf


There are a few others:

51: framed
52: encircled
53: overlined

etc. ;)
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
Top
Posted by Mademoiselle   Australia  (35 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #8 on Fri 08 Nov 2002 02:00 AM (UTC)
Message
Wow.

Guess which ones I'm /not/ going to bother implementing in my client. :P
Top
Posted by Mademoiselle   Australia  (35 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #9 on Fri 08 Nov 2002 02:02 AM (UTC)
Message
Actually, until I get around to re-writing my client in C++ (rather than the VB it's currently in ^_^;;), I don't think I'm going to bother with any of those. I really can't be bothered modifying my ansi to rtf converter. It can wait for the re-write. :)
Top
Posted by Welcomb   (14 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #10 on Wed 30 Apr 2003 08:53 PM (UTC)
Message
Well most other clients do implement blink. And blink is certainly more obvious than italics. Though it's not really crucial, it would be good if you could get it implemented. Maybe see how other clients do it.
Top
Posted by Poromenos   Greece  (1,037 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #11 on Wed 30 Apr 2003 09:25 PM (UTC)
Message
How about changing the text colour to the background colour and back again? Or can't you change colours after it's been drawn? Not sure on this.
Vidi, Vici, Veni.
http://porocrom.poromenos.org/ Read it!
Top
Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #12 on Wed 30 Apr 2003 11:47 PM (UTC)
Message
It can be done, it is just tedious. Imagine a text window with dozens of lines, hundreds of style runs, in a proportional font. In the middle somewhere is one blinking letter.

Now, every second (or whatever the blink rate is) I would have to:


  • Work out how much of the output buffer is actually visible (you might have scrolled back for instance)
  • Scan through that section looking for blinking text
  • Work out where that text is on the screen (allowing for pixel offets from the LH and top edge), and proportional fonts
  • Work out if we are in blink "on" or blink "off" mode
  • Redraw the background for that part
  • Redraw the letter if we are in blink "on"
  • Repeat for every other blinking style run (which might span line breaks)


Call me lazy, but I'm not in a hurry to do that. :)
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
Top
Posted by Ixokai   USA  (24 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #13 on Sat 03 May 2003 07:40 AM (UTC)
Message
If you do add support for blinking, ever, please add a nice, easy checkbox somewhere to the effect of, "Obliterate user who dares to use obnoxious blinking text that I wish never was implemented.". The preferrable method of obliteration is a gunshot to the head, but if nothing else, a tactical nuke is acceptable.

Take that as a lesson-- don't use or ask for blinking text! The innocent lives which will be destroyed for the next ten thousand years or so will be on your head!

Brought to you by the Honorable Society for the Preservation of the Eye through Proper Use of Decoration and Obliteration of Unholy Blinking Artifacts.

HSPEPUDOUBA is a not-for-profit organization.
Top
Posted by Shadowfyr   USA  (1,791 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #14 on Sat 03 May 2003 06:36 PM (UTC)

Amended on Sat 03 May 2003 06:38 PM (UTC) by Shadowfyr

Message
Perhaps something less radical? This is a GUI environment after all, so you could 'fade' the blinking text in and out and not have it be 'too much' worse than trying to make it blink in the first place. Unless it was set to fast blink, which is like 10 times a second of something, the result would be significantly less eye straining. ;)

But the fact is that using Italic seriously sucks, since the italic version of the font invariably breaks the fixed width restriction and destroys the maps and graphics that are 'usually' the place you most want to use them. This is also why I considered linking the 'bold' attribute, that on old DOS systems 'only' switched color modes to high color, is also a mistake. These things are quite reasonable for a 'font', but where never intended for fixed width terminals, which last I checked including all telnet systems, except those supporting MXP. I turned all that mode stuff off, but I suspect that it may effect 'any' use of <b> or <i> as well, which means having to turn back on the damn things if I ever play on an MXP mud, thus ending up with the pure ansi used on there all messed up again.

Of course I could be wrong about what those settings effect, but if not then it makes far more sense to have those settings in the MXP configuration for MXP and as a 'seperate' setting in ansi to determine 'which' one, if either, actually use those attributes. Underline is the only 'valid' one in all modes, though italics is also a terminal attribute (for some terminals), but imho until someone finds a way to prevent it from stretching the size of the letters to work and breaking the fixed width limit in the process, it is a broken one.
Top

The dates and times for posts above are shown in Universal Co-ordinated Time (UTC).

To show them in your local time you can join the forum, and then set the 'time correction' field in your profile to the number of hours difference between your location and UTC time.

51,555 views.

This is page 1, subject is 2 pages long: 1 2  [Next page]

It is now over 60 days since the last post. This thread is closed.     Refresh page

Go to topic:           Search the forum

[Go to top] top

Information and images on this site are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License unless stated otherwise.

Home