Text file widgets

Applies to Elementi 2016 and later.

Introduction

Because of their simplicity, plain-text files are commonly used for storage of information, like service / product descriptions, details of a procedure / process, notifications, rules, warnings etc. Text file widgets can be used to display the content of such text files, allowing adding styling information to the text and using animations whenever the entire text doesn't fit into the widget area.

There are many software tools that allows writing / modifying text files, like Notepad, WordPad, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, OpenOffice Writer, LibreOffice Writer etc.

Note:

The text content must be saved as plain-text format (.txt) before using it as data source. See this tutorial for more details.

Text widgets

Text file widgets in Elementi 2016 / 2017

Under the "Text" folder of Elementi 2015 Library, you can find three ready-to-use widgets that automatically display data extracted from a text file data source:

• Text Bar

  Displays text content using a fixed number of lines and applying a bottom-to-top & line-by-line scrolling effect whenever the entire text doesn't fit into the widget area.

• Text Ticker

  Displays text content using a continuous horizontal scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.

• Text Roll

  Displays text content using a continuous vertical scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the selected number of lines to fit into the predefined area.

Configuration

Each of the widgets above can be customized using the options provided under "Properties" tab - for more details, go to the dedicated page of each widget type, linked above.

"Data Properties" dialog for text file widgets in Elementi 2016 / 2017

To edit the properties related to the data source, click on the button. This opens the "Data Properties" dialog, which allows changing the following:

• URI

  Enter the URI from where the data is retrieved. This can be a local path into the project or a remote HTTP(S) address.

• Refresh

  Specify the period (5m, 10m, ... , 24h) after which the widget should try to automatically refresh the data. You can also enter this as a number followed by s (implicit), m or h; the minimum refresh value is 10 seconds for a local file and 60 seconds for a remote file. This is useful when the widget is running in a loop.

  Select "When document opens" when the widget is periodically opened from an external document (playlist, layout etc.) and automatic data refresh is not needed.

• Limit

  Enable this option and specify the maximum number of items (rows) to be kept from the data set (starting from the first row).

Note:

At any point, the data source configuration can be tested by clicking on the "Test..." button.

Troubleshooting

• Multiscreen usage.

  These widgets can only be used on a single screen when creating a multiscreen project; for multiple screens, a data feed widget must be used instead.

See also

• Data feeds
• Data-driven widgets
• Elementi 2017 Widgets, Elementi 2016 Widgets
• Text file widgets in Elementi 2015
• Feed widgets in Elementi 3.x
• Displaying a text file tutorial
• Text crawler widgets
• Text feed project
• Using text layers in Elementi