Text roll widgets

This page is related to Data-driven widgets and was updated for Elementi 2018 - the information below might not apply for older versions.

Description

The Text Roll widgets display 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. These widgets are especially useful when the size of the text is unknown in advance, for instance when the texts are coming from a data source.

Text Roll widgets can be found in several folders accessible from "Widgets" / "Library" tab within the Browse panel.

• Text Crawlers, RSS, Text, Spreadsheets, Calendars and Data Feeds starting with Elementi 2015
• Twitter starting with Elementi 2016
• Facebook starting with Elementi 2017
• Yammer starting with Elementi 2018
• Feed widgets in Elementi 3.x

Configuration

Text Roll properties

The following properties, found under "Properties" tab, can be used to customize the widget:

• Data source

  Click the button to open the Data Feed Properties dialog and edit the properties related to the data source from where the text items are taken.

• Locale

  Select the locale used for displaying dates and numbers.

• Text template

  Click the button to edit the text template used for displaying each item of text retrieved from the data source. The text template should contain one or more data placeholders (e.g., [[title]]). It can also have different text styles (font family, bold, italic, color) within, however the data placeholders must be treated as wholes (i.e. any style change must be applied to the entire string including the square brackets). The font size however cannot be manually set, because it is calculated automatically by the widget.

• Horizontal align

  Select the horizontal alignment of the text, between "Left", "Center", "Right", and "Justify".

• Looping

  Select whether the widget ends after the last text item or loops to the first one.

• Direction

  Select the direction of the scroll between "Bottom to top" and "Top to bottom".

• Number of lines

  Enter the number of lines to fit into the widget area. The font size is automatically adjusted for this.

• Speed

  Enter the scrolling speed as percentage of the line height size, meaning that 100 (i.e. 100%) represents roughly one line height per second. Note that the actual speed is rounded up to the closest value guaranteed to produce a smooth scroll.

• Spacing

  Enter the spacing between two items as percentage of the line height size.

Customization example

Let's customize the Text Roll widget to display more than just one data field. For that, follow these steps:

Text Roll customization example

1. Click the button to edit the text template.
2. Change the text content to something like this:
   [[title]]
[[description]]
3. Select the first data placeholder ([[title]]) and change its font style to bold and its color to blue.
4. Click the "OK" button to apply the changes.
5. Click the "Save" button on the toolbar.

Troubleshooting

• The following message is displayed: The text roll is set to loop and using it within a schedule or a multiscreen project might cause problems.

  The alert message is usually displayed when the widget is included into a multiscreen project or a schedule file and it is set to loop - in which case, it may cause synchronization problems. The solution is to disable the widget's looping property.

  This message can also be received within regular projects, when dragging the project timeline or when any manipulation is done on the feed widget after 12 hours of playing time - in this case the alert message can safely be ignored.

See also

• Tutorial on Displaying a text file using the Text roll widget.
• Text ticker widgets for continuous horizontal scrolling.
• Text bar widgets for vertical scrolling only when the text doesn't fit.
• Slideshow widgets for displaying slides composed of text & media layers, one after another as a playlist.
• Table widgets for displaying multiple items on the same slide.

For advanced users, see this tutorial about how to disable the automatic calculation of the font size.