#12001/3/19 10:31:09
What is the difference between text and fields?
Text cast members provide anti-aliased display for smooth rendering of large fonts on screen, individual paragraph formatting, and RTF importing. Text cast members are editable while working on your movie and, optionally while a movie plays. Text can also be controlled from Lingo. With Lingo you can edit text in existing cast members, specify formatting such as font and size, and interpret strings that users enter.
Fields use less memory, can be controlled from Lingo, and are editable at runtime, but do not offer anti-aliasing or individual paragraph formatting. In addition not all text formatting options are available for Fields. You cannot apply spacing, tabs, or indents to individual paragraphs within fields. In general, regular text is best for large type that you want to look as good as possible. Field text is an good choice for large blocks of smaller text in standard fonts that don't need to be anti-aliased. For more about Text and Fields refer to the text chapter of Using Director and search for" text" in the online help system.
If rich text is so great, why should I ever use fields?
Rich text cast members take up considerably more memory and storage space than field cast members. For example, a rich text cast member containing enough 12-point text to fill a normal page might take over 60 K of memory. The same amount of text in a field cast member would use around 2 or 3 K. If your memory or storage space is limited, there are many cases where using a field cast member may be more appropriate.
For larger blocks of text and text in smaller point sizes, fields are usually preferable to rich text. Anti-aliasing provides no benefit to most typefaces smaller than 14 points. In some cases it makes the text less legible. In general, anti-aliased rich text is best for headings, menu items, controls, and other items where you need small amounts of large, clear text.
What are some cases where fields would be better than text?
Fields are best for large blocks of text where no individual paragraph formatting is needed. This might include body text in an encyclopedia, product descriptions in a kiosk, or instructions in a game.
Since fields depend on the system software to display fonts, won't I have more trouble creating cross-platform movies?
No, since the introduction of embedded fonts in Director 7, developers have had the ability to embed or store a font in a movie file so that a font can be displayed even if it is not installed in a user's system. Embedded fonts appear as cast members and work on Windows and Macintosh computers and are compressed by Director to reduce file size.
Can I automatically convert fields to text or text to fields?
There is no automatic feature to convert fields to text cast members or vice versa. You can manually copy and paste the text between field and text cast members, or write a Lingo script to automate the process.
How do I decide whether to use fields
Ultimately, you will have to decide yourself which type of text is best for your application. Consider all the information covered in this document and in Using Director. Also, try to estimate the amount of text in your movie as early as possible in the development process and test to see if storage or memory limits will be an issue. If you are developing a cross-platform application, make sure to test on all platforms for any font and formatting problems.
