text to

Sometimes you might want to execute some code without all of those pesky print statements being actually shown to the player. Other times, you might be frustrated when you have trouble adding multiple print statements or things like print number var to a string array. For both of these, text to is your answer!

The manual says this:

text to	Sends text to the array table, beginning at address .
text to 0	Restores normal printing.

In practice, is likely to be an array. Future Boy has the following code, which we will comment on step by step:

string(_temp_string, "Talk to ")
text to (_temp_string + 8)
The(i)
text to 0

1. That first line writes “Talk to “ to the string array _temp_string
2. Now we switch on “text to”. The “+ 8” signifies that we’re going to start adding to the array 8 places in (so, after “Talk to “).
3. i in this case stands for a living character in the room. We’ll pretend it returns with “the janitor”.
4. This stops the writing-to-_temp_string, leaving it as “Talk to the janitor” (in this made up example). After this point, the Future Boy code goes on to add the phrase to the dictionary and then adds it to the in-game menu. You may have other uses.

So, that is one way it can be used. Let’s try another example!

Another example!

When one uses the PrintStatusLine routine provided by hubolib.h with STATUSTYPE 1, the score and move counter is printed exactly 65 places across on any display larger than 80 columns. This will look great on some displays but it’ll put the counter near the center of the screen for some people. Wouldn’t we rather put it always in the upper right corner of our screen?

We can use display.screenwidth to figure out the width of the screen, but as our score and turn counter numbers go up in digits, we want to keep the status line as consistent as possible. text to to the rescue!

! this routine won't work if you have #set NO_STRING_ARRAYS in your code.
! Of course, if you have turned off string arrays, what are you doing looking at
! "text to?"

replace PrintStatusline
{
    if display.linelength < 80
        display.statusline_height = 2
    else
        display.statusline_height = 1

    Font(BOLD_OFF | ITALIC_OFF | UNDERLINE_OFF | PROP_OFF)
    window display.statusline_height
    {
        color SL_TEXTCOLOR, SL_BGCOLOR
        cls
        locate 1, 1
        if not location
            print "_";
        elseif not light_source
            print "In the dark";
        else
        {
            if FORMAT & DESCFORM_F:  print "_";
            print capital location.name;
        }

! (The part we're changing)
!           print to 65; ! is 65 characters good for every window size? No!

! Instead, let's begin by writing the entire 'SCORE / MOVES' to array _temp_string
! (_temp_string is an array declared by the library)

                text to _temp_string
        if STATUSTYPE = 1
            print number score; " / "; number counter;
        elseif STATUSTYPE = 2
            print HoursMinutes(counter);
            text to 0
! Ok, we've closed off the string array

! Now, if the screen is wide enough, let's move to the end of the screen MINUS the length of the _temp_string array
! plus two extra spaces for good measure (so there's a little space to the right on the status bar)
        if display.statusline_height = 1
            print to (display.screenwidth - (StringLength(_temp_string) + 2));
        else
        {
            locate 1, 2
            if FORMAT & DESCFORM_F:  print "_";
        }

 ! Now let's print it!
        if STATUSTYPE = 1,2
                     StringPrint(_temp_string)
    }
    color TEXTCOLOR, BGCOLOR
    Font(DEFAULT_FONT)
}

There we go! We’re all text to pros now!