Add ability to disable text emphasis

SDK Feature Requests
,
1

The drawText() function adds emphasis to text wrapped in * or _ (bold and italics respectively). This is a helpful feature in most situations, but I'd like to be able to disable it.

I'm aware that I can..

  • escape these characters by doubling them (i.e. ** or __).
  • replace these characters at runtime with their escaped versions.
  • replace these characters at build/compile time with their escaped versions.

However, it would be nice to have a way to simply disable this functionality so that text is rendered plainly.

2

Monkey patch for those who are after this behavior now:

-- swizzle.lua
function swizzle()
  local gfx <const> = playdate.graphics
  local _drawText = gfx.drawText
  
  playdate.graphics.drawText = function(text, x, y, styled)
    if not styled then 
      gfx.getFont():drawText(text, x, y)
    else
      _drawText(text, x, y)
    end
  end
  
end

swizzle()

-- main.lua
import 'swizzle'

function playdate.update()
  playdate.graphics.drawText("*test*", 0, 0, true)
  playdate.graphics.drawText("*test*", 60, 0)
end
3

Just wanted to repeat this from our Discord chat for other's posterity:

Ohh thanks! I hadn't realized that font:drawText() would render text without emphasis, so this solved my problem! I think it would be helpful if this was added to the docs :slight_smile:

3 Likes
4

I've filed an issue to mention font.drawText() as an alternative. Thanks for the feedback! :slight_smile:

2 Likes