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4D v14.3

ST SET PLAIN TEXT


ST SET PLAIN TEXT ( {* ;} object ; newText {; startSel {; endSel}} )

Parameter	Type	Description
*	Operator	If specified, object is an object name (string) If omitted, object is a variable or a field
object	Form object	Object name (if * is specified) or Variable or field (if * is omitted)
newText	Text	Text to insert
startSel	Longint	Start of selection
endSel	Longint	End of selection

Description

The ST SET PLAIN TEXT command inserts the text passed in the newText parameter into the styled text field or variable designated by the object parameter. This command only applies to the plain text of theobject parameter, without modifying any style tags that it contains.

Unlike the ST SET TEXT command, ST SET PLAIN TEXT only inserts plain text. You must not pass text with style tags in newText must not have any style tags. If it contains the <, > or & characters, they are considered as standard characters and converted into HTML entities:

'&' is converted to &
'<' is converted to <
'>' is converted to >

If you pass the optional * parameter, this indicates that the object parameter is an object name (string). During execution, when the object has the focus, the command only applies to the object being edited and not to its data source (field or variable). The changes are only transferred to the source (and to any other objects using this same source) when the object being edited is validated either by losing the focus or with the Enter key. When the object does not have the focus, the command applies directly to the data source and the changes are immediately transferred to any other objects using the same source.
If you omit the * parameter, this indicates that the object parameter is a field or variable and you pass a field or variable reference instead of a string. The command applies directly to the field or variable and changes are immediately transferred to all the objects using this source, including the object with the focus.

In newText, pass the plain text to be inserted.

The optional startSel and endSel parameters let you designate a selection of text in object. The startSel and endSel values give a selection of plain text, without taking any style tags found in the text into account. The action of the command varies according to the optional startSel and endSel parameters:

If you omit startSel and endSel, ST SET PLAIN TEXT replaces all the text of the object by newText,
If you only pass startSel or if the values of startSel and endSel are equal, ST SET PLAIN TEXT inserts the newText text into object beginning at startSel,
If you pass both startSel and endSel, ST SET PLAIN TEXT replaces the plain text set by these limits with the newText text.
You can pass 0 in endSel to designate automatically the last character of the text (pass 1 in startSel to designate the first character of the text).

4D provides predefined constants that you can use to automatically designate the limits of the selection in the startSel and endSel parameters. These constants are available in the "Multistyle Text" theme:

Constant	Type	Value	Comment
ST End highlight	Longint	-1001	Designates last character of current text selection in object (*)
ST End text	Longint	0	Designates last character of text contained in object
ST Start highlight	Longint	-1000	Designates first character of current text selection in object (*)
ST Start text	Longint	1	Designates first character of text contained in object

(*) You must pass an object name in object to be able to use this constant. If you pass a field or variable reference, the command is applied to all the text of the object.

The style of the first character replaced will be used for all of the newText text.

If startSel is greater than endSel (except when endSel value is 0, see above), the text is not modified and the OK variable is set to 0.

Example

Given the following rich text (multi-style) variable:

You want to insert company names that are stored in a text field. These names can contain, for example, the "&" character. In this case, you will need to use the ST SET PLAIN TEXT command:

ST SET PLAIN TEXT(myStyledText;[Company]Name;33;34)

Here is the result:

Here is the plain text contained in the variable:

You can see that the inserted text was enclosed within an additional pair of style tags. These tags correspond to the style of the characters before they were inserted. This mechanism is a way of guaranteeing the correct display of rich text fields in all cases.

Note: If you had used the ST SET TEXT command in this case, 4D would not have inserted anything because the presence of the non-encoded "&" character would prevent the interpretation of the style tags found in the variable. For more information, refer to the description of this command.

System variables and sets

After this command is executed, the OK variable is set to 1 if no error occurred; otherwise, it is set to 0. This is the case more particularly when style tags are not evaluated properly (incorrect or missing tags).

In the case of an error, the variable is not changed. When an error occurs on a variable when text is being evaluated, 4D transforms the text into plain text; as a result, the <, > and & characters are converted into HTML entities.