dMZX Forums: Newline chars handled poorly in default message boxes -> MegaZeux Bugs -> Tracker

When a newline character is in a string being displayed by the default message box, it currently stops display of the rest of the string. However, if the newlines cause text to extend far down enough, the text will not be ignored and will instead write over the bottom (the info box) of the message box. Example:

set "$string3" to "WOOO\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO\nWOOOOOOO\nOMMMMMMMMGGGGGGGG"
[ "&$string3&"

Ideally, newlines would cause the message box to act as if the string ended there, while treating the rest of the string as if it were the next string.

This will be looked at whenever the message box code gets overhauled.

Since I came across the broken behavior here again, I looked into it a little:

• Versions 2.70 and under display the broken behavior when \n is hex edited into a robot message box command. The robot editor F3 dialog refuses to insert \n. (Only tested 2.70.)
  
• Versions 2.80 through 2.81 display the broken behavior, but \n can be inserted with comical results.
  
• Versions 2.81b and onward display the broken behavior, but the robot editor has the modern \n escapes, so at least it can be edited properly.

Since patch #342 changes the behavior of the "tabs_allowed" field to these functions, there are a couple of options: 1) newlines can be ignored, which will just display char 10 (same as the default behavior for tab/char 9 now), or 2) the string write can terminate at char 10 line it does with scrolls. Which seems better/more useful?

(The proposal for splitting these lines sounds kind of like a pain but could maybe still be a future thing with option 2. Option 1 may pretty much prevent it, but having char 10 available for messages also seems nice.)