Text select

Alex17

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Jun 7, 2017, 7:56:25 PM6/7/17

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I want to have a block of text where users can select a word in a paragraph. I think I've run out of work arounds to get this done but please let me know if you can see something I've overlooked.

1 Webviewer - I can get the text in the webviewer but the text select is really glitchy, if you try and select multiple words the first point you selected drops down to the line below and I've never been able to select what I actually want. There is also no way to parse the words back to the app without copy and paste (Made easier with Taufun's extention).

2 Canvas - I can print the paragraph on a canvas and correctly select words that way, but the canvas text is too pixelated to be readable for any period of time. There's no way around this unless a label can be placed over the canvas or the text modified on the backend.

3 Buttons - I can print each word to a button but that is hard to format correctly and a user can't select multiple words with a click and drag.

Abraham Getzler

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Jun 8, 2017, 11:47:32 AM6/8/17

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See attached for how to do it using a label and some navigation buttons.

Gallery link:

ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/?galleryId=5394316644843520

ABG

display.PNG

globals.PNG

Screen1_Initialize.PNG

word_picker.aia

btnExpand.PNG

btnLeft.PNG

btnRight.PNG

btnShrink.PNG

Capture.PNG

Abraham Getzler

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Jun 8, 2017, 10:31:07 PM6/8/17

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Attached is a faster version, using a html label to highlight the selected word or phrase.

ABG

btnRight5_Click.PNG

last.PNG

locate_word.PNG

Screen1_Initialize.PNG

tail.PNG

word_picker_v2.aia

btnExpand_Click.PNG

btnLeft_Click.PNG

btnLeft5.PNG

btnRight_Click.PNG

btnShrink_Click.PNG

Capture.PNG

Designer.PNG

display.PNG

extend_indices.PNG

global_whitespace.PNG

globals.PNG

head.PNG

Alex17

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Jun 8, 2017, 11:22:28 PM6/8/17

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Hey that's a really cool solution! Thanks

Abraham Getzler

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Jun 9, 2017, 1:32:08 PM6/9/17

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If you use the second version, there are 2 bugs left to tidy up ...

The word selection gets flaky at the very end of the text, and

I assumed all words are bounded by just 1 blank, an assumption that

fails at the end of each sentence. This would be fixed by complementing

the list of word start indices with a matching list of word lengths.

ABG

Nico Marikucza

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Jun 10, 2017, 6:37:43 AM6/10/17

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+1, Abraham!

Why is this tutorial not available in your FAQ?

Nico

Abraham Getzler

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Jun 10, 2017, 9:10:38 PM6/10/17

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Why is this tutorial not available in your FAQ?

My FAQ holds answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

This was the first time any one asked for how to so this,

so it doesn't yet qualify as Frequently Asked.

I do have an index to my Gallery projects here

if you're hungry for more ...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1acg2M5KdunKjJgM3Rxpy_Rf6vT6OozxdIWglgbmzroA/edit?usp=sharing

By the way, I named the FAQ "Power Users FAQ" to encourage other Power Users to housekeep it.

ABG

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