Noneditable "edit text" box to be able to select and copy part of the text

Hi,

1. Is there a way to create an "edit text" box, but don't allow it to be edited or modified? I want it so that a part of text can be selected and copied.

I don't want to do it with creating a button to copy entire text into the clipboard. I am trying to get capabilities of selecting a part of text and copying it, not the full text.

h = uicontrol('Style','edit','Position',[10 10 300 100],...
      'min',0,'max',2,'enable','on');  
str = {['x^2+e^{\pi i} Since its founding in 1984, MathWorks has become the leading ',...
      'global provider of technical computing and model-based design ',...
      'software. Headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts, MathWorks ',...
  'global provider of technical computing and model-based design ',...
'software. Headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts, MathWorks ',...
'currently employs more than 1,000 people worldwide. ']};
set(h,'String',str) % display the string

2. I am also trying to get that equation to show up in tex or latex format, couldn't get around it. That's my second question how to get an equation to show up in an edit text box.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

1. You can set a uicontrol style edit 'Enable' to 'inactive' to have a text box that cannot be modified but can be scrolled. Unfortunately, selection is disabled . You would have to go in at the java level to do better.
2. There is no hope of getting tex or latex in a uicontrol style edit, other than going in at the Java level.

[Baha411]

Walter, thanks for your response. Could you please guide me through going into the java level? I am willing to learn that.

My ojective is to just create a text environment where some text/equations can be illustrated nicely and copy/pasted. I am surprised Matlab doesn't have such capabilities handy.

I wonder about your insigths on the alternatives to achieve such objectives?

Can I print the text on a .pdf type of file which can be illustrated in a scrollable box in GUI?

[Walter Roberson]

You can render to images and then it is possible to make scrollable axes that you display them in; there are some File Exchange contributions for scrollable axes. I seem to recall the App Designer has enhanced facilities for scrolling axes.

The facility for creating nice environments that can mix image and equations and code, is Live Script. However, when I was looking a few weeks ago, I could not find any facility to dynamically create latex to be displayed.

[Baha411]

Hello Walter,

What do you mean by live script? .mlx file? Can I embed an .mlx file into a GUI panel?

I am still looking for creating an environement where I can print equations, preferabley in latex.

[Walter Roberson]

Live Script does refer to .mlx files.

At present, Live Script is useful for creating documents with executable parts, in which you can insert headers and lines of text that include equations. However, I do not yet know of any way to dynamically construct equations to be displayed in Live Script.

Answer 2

[Vencel Kozma]

I have a workaround for that.

1. - Create a class (e.g.: "gui_status"), where you could store the correspondent text:

classdef gui_status < handle

    
    properties
        ...
        status_message string
    end
end

2.- Create an instance inside the gui's handle like:

    handles.gui_status.status_message = "";

3.- Every time you want to change the string of an "edit" object (e.g.: "edit_message"), you also store it in your new instance as well:

    ...
    handles.gui_status.status_message = handles.edit_message.String;
    ...

4.- In the Callback function of "edit_message" (if you modify the text unintentionally), you could re-set it with the so-called instance:

function edit_message_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
% hObject    handle to edit_message (see GCBO)
% eventdata  reserved - to be defined in a future version of MATLAB
% handles    structure with handles and user data (see GUIDATA)

handles.edit_message.String = handles.gui_status.status_message;