Widget Update/Override Request

CoronaCards (Corona in native apps) CoronaCards for WP8
#1

With the issues WP8 has with displaying newText objects, I realized this is affecting widgets with text such as buttons and their labels. For example I have a overlay scene that has 12 button widgets, all with a single character label, and it takes upwards of 3 or 4 seconds for the overlay to come on screen!

I tried looking at possibly adding a new button type to the widget.button that would use bitmapText objects for the labels, or even overriding the 2 image button function (The one I make use of) but I think that’s a little over my head.

Has anyone else figured out another solution?

#2

A widget button inherits from Corona’s “group” display object.  Meaning that a widget button can be a container for other display objects such as images, sprites, shapes, etc.  This means that a widget button has a :insert() function, just like a group.

So, what you can do is create a widget button with an empty label/string and then insert your bitmap font text inside of the widget button.

Here is a quick example:

-- Create a button without text. local myButton = widget.newButton { width = 128, height = 32, label = "", } -- Insert your bitmap font text inside of the button. myBitmapFontText.x = myButton.contentWidth / 2 -- Center your text. myBitmapFontText.y = myButton.contentHeight / 2 -- Center your text. myButton:insert(myBitmapFontText)
#3

And an even simpler solution would be to not use a widget button and instead create a new PNG of a button with the text, all pre-drawn.  This means creating a PNG for every different button/text combination that you have.  This is simple, but much more wasteful in memory.

#4

That’s great! Thank you Joshua. I thought about the other option of making individual buttons for each one, it’s easier… but I rather learn the more efficient ways for future reference :slight_smile:

#5

Don’t bother creating an empty label if your going to add one on top anyway using a bitmap font. Your just creating another display object for nothing with that.

Best of luck

#6

I’ve seen the widget button code.  It creates a display.newText() object regardless if you give it a label field or not.  If you don’t give it a label field, then by default it sets the text to an empty string “”.  On WP8, we’ve optimized it for the empty string case.

#7

Hi Joshua, by optimized do you mean that an empty display.newText doesn’t have the adverse effect that a non-empty one does?

#8

Correct.  If you pass an empty string or a string containing unprintable characters (such as a space) into display.newText(), then it is much much faster because in these cases there is no text to render.  Now for the case where you just have a space in the string " ", a completely transparent bitmap/texture will still be generated using the correct font/text metrics, but we skip the step where we have the operating system drawing text to the bitmap which avoids the huge performance penalty.

#9

A widget button inherits from Corona’s “group” display object.  Meaning that a widget button can be a container for other display objects such as images, sprites, shapes, etc.  This means that a widget button has a :insert() function, just like a group.

So, what you can do is create a widget button with an empty label/string and then insert your bitmap font text inside of the widget button.

Here is a quick example:

-- Create a button without text. local myButton = widget.newButton { width = 128, height = 32, label = "", } -- Insert your bitmap font text inside of the button. myBitmapFontText.x = myButton.contentWidth / 2 -- Center your text. myBitmapFontText.y = myButton.contentHeight / 2 -- Center your text. myButton:insert(myBitmapFontText)
#10

And an even simpler solution would be to not use a widget button and instead create a new PNG of a button with the text, all pre-drawn.  This means creating a PNG for every different button/text combination that you have.  This is simple, but much more wasteful in memory.

#11

That’s great! Thank you Joshua. I thought about the other option of making individual buttons for each one, it’s easier… but I rather learn the more efficient ways for future reference :slight_smile:

#12

Don’t bother creating an empty label if your going to add one on top anyway using a bitmap font. Your just creating another display object for nothing with that.

Best of luck

#13

I’ve seen the widget button code.  It creates a display.newText() object regardless if you give it a label field or not.  If you don’t give it a label field, then by default it sets the text to an empty string “”.  On WP8, we’ve optimized it for the empty string case.

#14

Hi Joshua, by optimized do you mean that an empty display.newText doesn’t have the adverse effect that a non-empty one does?

#15

Correct.  If you pass an empty string or a string containing unprintable characters (such as a space) into display.newText(), then it is much much faster because in these cases there is no text to render.  Now for the case where you just have a space in the string " ", a completely transparent bitmap/texture will still be generated using the correct font/text metrics, but we skip the step where we have the operating system drawing text to the bitmap which avoids the huge performance penalty.