A while back, I was experimenting with Text widgets in AutoHotkey. And I found that without a lot of work, I could display text presentations or shows coming down the length of a window or centered within a window, one paragraph at a time.
I call the resulting program TextShow, which is it’s direct purpose. These shows are easily saved with a tool like ScreenToGIF ( https://www.screentogif.com/ )
Some example output is here.
The text to create this show is here.
Notice at the end of some lines of the text there are what I call slash codes as they start with a backslash. These are formatting codes for the line color and the duration lines are displayed.
- /3 means display the text for 3 seconds
- /r means display the text in Red color
- /u means underlined
- /i means italic
The show can also be presented downward in a larger window. Four transitions are available in this mode, /st, /sb, /sl, /sr, which are Slide Top, Slide Bottom, Slide Left and Slide Right. The above text looks like this in Multi-line mode.
The first line of a text show has several values:
One,Palatino Linotype,32,100,1,FFCC99,2,000000,Center
This example is One line at a time, Palatino Linotype font, 32 point size, 100 pixels from the top, 1 row in height, FFCC99 background color, 2 second default pause, 000000 text color (black) and Center (center each line versus left justified.
This first line will change as you select options from the bottom but you can edit it if you are careful.
Once the text, colors and timings are the way you like, you can display the Text Show from the program or save it to an animated GIF via a 3rd party program. The one I use is the ScreenToGIF mentioned in the second paragraph.
While a show is running you can move the mouse pointer to the top of the window to display these controls. Check mark Loop if you want the show to run continuously. Click Restart to begin it again. Click Open to choose another Text Show and display it. Or click Edit to open the Edit Show window.
When the program is run, it displays the options to Open an existing show, start a New show or to Quit the program.
If anyone wants a copy of this program, please email me.