Hello there!
A while back, I had made an open-sourced module called SmartText that could help in formatting text with Roblox’s RichText feature. And although it was kinda useful, it could’ve been a whole lot better. That’s why I decided to make SmartText2! The biggest improvement with this module is the ability to chain its functions. An example could look like this:
SmartText.new("Hello, world!"):Bold():Underline():ColorRGB(255,255,255)This makes the module much more convenient, and keeps your scripts looking cleaner.
What exactly is SmartText2?
Like previously stated, SmartText2 is a ModuleScript that makes it easy to format your text with Roblox’s RichText feature. The module can create different text “objects”, which comes with various methods for formatting that text. And what makes this module so special is that these methods can be chained, making your code cleaner and more efficient.
How do I get started?
Get started with SmartText2 in three simple steps:
- Download the module for free from Roblox
- Insert the module into ReplicatedStorage
- Require it from another script:
local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage") local SmartText2 = require(ReplicatedStorage:WaitForChild("SmartText2"))You can also require the module using it’s
AssetId(won’t work in LocalScripts):local SmartText2 = require(6598530777)
How do I use SmartText2?
SmartText2’s documentation can be found here
With SmartText2 required from your script, we can begin to use it! So lets start by creating a SmartText2 text object:
local text = SmartText2.new()This will create a new SmartText2 object. By default, the text will be an empty string. But if you would like, you can pass in your own string in the
textparameter of the constructor:local text = SmartText2.new("This is some text!")Now this text object actually has some text, but lets say you don’t want to add any text right away and/or you want to add some text later on. In that case, you can use this object’s
:Concat()method. This method will concatenate the object’s current text with some more text.local text = SmartText2.new("This is some text!") text:Concat(" More text!") --> This is some text! More text!But like I mentioned earlier, these methods can be chained. So the above example could also be written as:
local text = SmartText2.new("This is some text!"):Concat(" More text!") --> This is some text! More text!There are, of course, more methods besides the
:Concat()function. You can find the entire list on SmartText2’s documentation.So lets actually start formatting your text! To bolden your text, we can use the
:Bold()method:local text = SmartText2.new("Text"):Bold() --> <b>Text</b>Now your text is formatted to look bold! What’s cool about this method, as well as most of the other methods, is that you can concatenate the formatted text, rather than formatting the entire thing. If you pass a string through the
:Bold()method, the result would look like this:local text = SmartText2.new("This is"):Concat():Bold("bold text") --> This is <b>bold text</b> -- using Concat() with no arguments will default to a space (' ')That works the same way with most of the other methods of the SmartText2 object.
Some methods, like the
:Size()method, contain more than one parameter for arguments to be passed through it. For example, the:Size()method has an optionaltextparameter and a requiredsizeparameter:local text = SmartText2.new("Big text"):Size(50) --> <font size="50">Big text</font>This, of course, has that optional
textparameter that can concatenate a string with the format, rather than formatting the entire thing:local text = SmartText2.new("This is"):Concat():Size("big text", 50) --> This is <font size="50">big text</font>So we can create a text object and format it to our heart’s desire, but how do we actually use it in scripting? The SmartText2 text object is actually a table, so to access the object’s text, we can index it with
.text, which will return the text. You can also pass it throughtostring(), which essentially does the same thing. For example:local text = SmartText2.new("This is some awesome text!"):Bold():Size(50) print(text.text) --> <font size="50"><b>This is some awesome text!</b></font> -- or print(tostring(text)) --> <font size="50"><b>This is some awesome text!</b></font>The SmartText2 class utilizes the
.__concatmetamethod, so you can safely concatenate a SmartText2 text object with any string, as well as two different SmartText2 objects, which will combine them both into a new text object:local text1 = SmartText2.new("Hello") local text2 = text1 .. ", world!" -- returns a string print(text2) --> Hello, world!local text1 = SmartText2.new("Hello"):Bold():Concat(", ") local text2 = SmartText2.new("world!"):Size(50) local text3 = text1 .. text2 -- returns a new text object print(text3.text) --> <b>Hello</b>, </font size="50">world!</font>Notice how, when I concatenate a SmartText2 text object with a string, it returns a string; not a text object. As for concatenating two different SmartText2 text objects, it combines them and returns an entirely new text object.
There’s so much more you can do with this module. If you want to learn more, you can check out SmartText2’s documentation here.
Examples
Bellow are a few examples I made using this module. All examples are a LocalScript, which are parented to a TextLabel:
Example #1
Script
local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage") local SmartText2 = require(ReplicatedStorage:WaitForChild("SmartText2")) local text1 = SmartText2.new("SmartText2"):Bold():Size(30):Face("Kalam"):ColorRGB(100,200,200) local text2 = SmartText2.new("automatic formatting"):Bold():ColorRGB(100,200,200) script.Parent.Text = "By using " .. text1 .. ", you can get amazing-looking text with " .. text2Result
Example #2
Script
local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage") local SmartText2 = require(ReplicatedStorage:WaitForChild("SmartText2")) local text = SmartText2.new() local function Countdown(duration) for i = duration, 0, -1 do text:Set("Time left: "):ColorRGB(i, 200,50,50):Bold():Size(50) script.Parent.Text = text.text wait(1) end end Countdown(60)Result
Thank you!
Thank you for taking the time to check out my SmartText2 module! If you want to learn more about this module, make sure you check out the documentation.
