Feel free to make adjustments to textbook as you see fit. I personally am very open to this PR and feel free to add me on the review for it.
You can also continue the conversation on here and then on GitHub once you have a PR. My personal apprehension to this this might be more of a design question. Does the [{text:“my string”}] feel intuitive? Maybe it totally does! Just want to double check this is the best approach. Also I think it would be best to keep everything on the current textblock. If there is a huge overhaul to the internals of it this will require a lot of testing. Plus remember any new changes must maintain backwards compatibility.
Dears,
As I am back with just another session of my GUI ‘evaluation’, I was just wondering: Where do we stand with this project today?
Looking back at it a little, it might have just gone out of scope.
Though, I truly believe that the ability to use simple styling within a textBlock would really improve things and be a fine ‘nice to have’ if not a ‘must have’.
When I say ‘simple’, understand similar to html or just very basic inline css-like. Bold or strong, italic, underline…eventually color… I guess you got my point. Really not much more than that.
And then, in this simple form, (in my opinion only) I would really see it as part of the core features (not as a plugin)
What is your say? @sebavan@Deltakosh (who closed the topic on gh and requested for an extension) @carolhmj (my gui mentor )
I’m starting over from scratch as an independent module (following advice from @Deltakoshon the Github PR).
I need to know if GUI’s internal API is stable, because I’m building everything extending the 2D GUI Control class (private methods like _draw(), _applyState(), _processMeasures() and so on…). I would like to avoid too much maintenance every BabylonJS’s major version bump.
Babylon guarantees backwards compatibility on the public API, even between major versions. But we don’t (and can’t really) guarantee back-compat on protected and private methods. These might change, not only between major versions but possibly within a minor or a patch release.
Now, to your direct question - the GUI API (also the internal one) hasn’t been changed in the last few years. it is working, it is quite stable, and apart of a few hiccups along the way it stayed the same since it was created. Will it ever change? not sure. Maybe we will decide to revamp the entire thing for Babylon 8. Probably not
One positive thing regarding back-compat is that even if we do change the internal API of the GUI package, your extended package will continue working with any version of Babylon core. so if you fork the GUI project and maintain it yourself, you don’t have to worry about changes to the GUI system at all.
I don’t feel like forking and maintaining my own version of the full 2D GUI lib, in case of trouble I could eventually have my own Control class copy, but for instance let’s say nothing will change anytime soon!
I know it’s been a very long time, but I have recently working on it again.
It has been remade from scratch, but it still depend on Babylon 2D GUI, because it is best to have good interop with it.
It’s still too early to publish it right now, there are still some rough edges and bugs. Sorry if it feels a bit of a vaporware, but 3D is not my day to day job, and I have little time for side-projects.
Now for the wow feature: it supports a markup language of my own, similar to Markdown (sort of extension of Markdown), but allowing way more things, like colors and effects on isolated parts of a text.
So far it supports:
bold
italic
underline
frame (a rounded background rectangle)
custom color
inline image in the text flow
slow-typing global effect
various effects like : shake, wave, bob, jump forward/backward, etc
hyperlink (it emits an event with the href)
hint (it emits an event with the text)
Infotip/tooltip is planned to work out of the box.
The focus is still on game GUI.
Some example of the syntax:
Hello *my* **friend**, stay [awhile]<green> and _listen_...
Once upon a [time]<bg:blue>, there was a [fearsome]<fx:shake> dragon that was devastating the country...
Example with hyperlink and hint:
This is a [link](http://example.com).
This is a ?[hint][secret message].
As you can see, it’s in the same spirit than Markdown.
Styling text-parts is done by enclosing a text inside brackets and using <> to set the style.
It’s very natural.
Wow. Nice to have you back with this. I have to say I didn’t expect this to be ‘revived from its ashes’
Personal opinion only here: I’d rather think that one of the reason(s) why this has become the ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ of GUI is because you wanted to push it just too far. I believe what people are mostly in need of (including me) is already just the ‘base of styling’. Deliver that already and you’re gonna have lots of people from this forum praising your skills and committment. Starting with me of course
Just want to double check this is the best approach. Also I think it would be best to keep everything on the current textblock. If there is a huge overhaul to the internals of it this will require a lot of testing. Plus remember any new changes must maintain backwards compatibility.
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is because you wanted to push it just too far. I believe what people are mostly in need of (including me) is already just the ‘base of styling’. Deliver that already and you’re gonna have lots of people from this forum praising your skills and committment. Starting with me of course 
