Display Block Editor

[Lone_Puppy]

I've noticed a lot of discussion around wanting to use the output of a [variable] instead of the actual text and I did think of a possible solution using an alternative to square brackets to differentiate.

However, you will get to the point where you want to use those characters and being functional this is no good.

What I suggest is upgrade the editor for Display modules to be more like something like that we use to make posts in forums, or perhaps a cut down version of and HTML, Java or other editor.

It would embed protected characters into the display without the player having to learn anything. Much the way HTML and most word processing editors work. That way, you only deal with the text and a toolbar to change colours, text size and positioning, symbol characters, etc.

Either that or increase the total number of characters allowed in a display module.
*UPDATE* Actually, you most likely need more characters anyway.

 

[NeonSturm]

I like more characters, for example dividing them among multiple display modules in an area.
Display module text can now interact with logic-CPUs which allows to import files into starmade, but only copying 120 characters a time is not enjoyable.

HTML uses a lot of documentary redundancy such as "«div class="class class2"» … «/div»" rather than using "div .class .class2{ … }" as css does.
While the number of symbols in a display block is limited, I would prefer the CSS-way over the html-way

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Sounds good to me.
I'm angling for an editor where I don't have to learn or see whatever code is in the background unless I click a button to show code.
All I need to do is click the button that toggles bold or assigns a colour.

 

[Lukwan]

I typed a ton of code-lines for colored text in tutorial ship. The code was not daunting, just tedious to repeat for each new display.

My short-cut was to save a template for a single display that I had pre-typed the code lines of each color/size. Then I just picked out the color I wanted to use from the paste list. This made me crave an improved system for sorting templates, because right now it's just a sequential list.

Also we desperately need some kind of Tab/Offset for floating text.