[Ohrrpgce] Text markup, again

[Ralph Versteegen]

I want to finally expose the ability to use text markup and non-8x8 fonts
to users. Even before all the menus and slice collections are updated, and
before the textbox file format or any others are replaced. Therefore there
will be graphical problems and shortcomings, but we need that in order to
find and fix what needs fixing. It can be marked experimental.

(I have a plan for textboxes: just repurpose the 304 bytes used to store
the existing 8 lines of text as a single autowrapped 304 byte string, plus
an extra 200 bytes or so tacked onto the end of each SAY record so there's
plenty of spare space to actually use markup/compact fonts.)

But this means we need to finalise the markup. I'm very undecided. Sorry,
lots of waffle.

Previously:

On Friday, January 27, 2017, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On 28 January 2017 at 13:10, Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Also, I decided that it's best not to use ${...} codes for markup
>> supported by printstr such as color and font. ${...} should be exclusively
>> for inserting a string variable in the text, as in many programming
>> languages. Instead I was thinking of using #{...}, or maybe quite different
>> syntax which has (optional) closing tags, like $[col45]...$[/col], since
>> closing tags really are needed (right now I'm using -1 to mean 'restore
>> previous'). Other tag names could include colbg, pal, spc (no closing tag),
>> font, indent, indentr, and even link=.
>>
>
> Plus also no-argument $[b], $[i], $[h] tags, which switch to the
> bold/italic/highlight font.
> Actually, maybe we can just use [b], [col45], etc, or <b>, <col45>... and
> add a backcompat bit to enable them, and use a $ prefix to escape them
>

Godot also uses bbcode:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/gui/bbcode_in_richtextlabel.html#reference

I like the idea of allowing both short and long forms of markup, eg both
[c10] and [col10] and [color10], because there will be a lot of codes. But
it makes parsing harder. So I'll just list long forms below.

Options include:
-#{color10} #{/color}
-or some other variant like :{color10}, !{color10}.
-[color=10] [/color]  or [color10]    (= is optional)
-just [color=10] [/color]  (= is mandatory if there's an arg)
-$[color10] $[/color]
-<color10> </color>, or <color=10> </color>. Not quite XML.
-RPG Maker uses \C[10] and a lot of other one-character backslash codes
(see attachment) for other things like pauses.

Two-argument tags are also required, for embedding image n frame m. E.g.
<spr4,8>

I already notice that I find it really easy to accidentally type ${i}
instead of #{i}.

Markup beginning with ! or with : has a problem: the ! or : is easily
mistaken as part of the preceding text, eg "Gold:{C10} ${V2}"

$ is used for string operators and embed codes, and I wanted the syntax
$"Gold: ${gold}" to embed a local or global variable by name. so Using $
neerd

Note that the text renderer doesn't process markup that doesn't have a
valid tag name or argument. So there's less backcompat risk

Nonetheless If we were to use bbcode, a backcompat bit to disable it seems
warranted. If we used anything else, like #{i} then I see no need for a
bit. That would simplify a lot of code since we wouldn't need to pass the
backcompat bit as "withtags" all over the codebase, which seems pretty
horrible, and especially for text slices in slice collections. Should
probably rule out bbcode just for this, unless the backcompat only affected
textboxes (and maybe plotstrings) and nothing else. That's probably already
good enough to avoid all backcompat problems. I guess I should run
rpgbatch.py to extract textboxes and other strings and see what I find.

bbcode or <color10> are easiest to type. That's important.

bbcode or angle brackets may be a nuiscance on forums, wikis, or help pages.

And then I also want to support mediawiki markup, for help pages. That
would be an optional per-slice setting, available to users too. But
mediawiki isn't a popular markup. Markdown is. Honestly if easy typing is a
concern, optional markdown seems like the ultimate solution for
italics/bold/underline/strikethrough/indent. This comparison of markup
languages is interesting:
http://hyperpolyglot.org/lightweight-markup#text-style

And then there's the tag names to use.
[i] should mean italic, but I also wanted i for icon. Hmm, ico or icon. And
img for sprites... or spr? spr is probably too similar to spc, for
horizontal space (in pixels). I suppose s would be strike-through not space
or sprite?
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