Question

How is it possible to DISPLAY text with simple formatting (like font color) in flash TextArea or similar control? I need to add text to this control programmatically and be able to select and copy portions of it to clipboard.

RichTextEditor does not fit my needs sine it has multiple controls to allow user to format text and no way to disable them (?).

UPDATE

Additional question is how to code formatting. Only <b> does work in the following code:

private function Print(s:String, ... optionalArgs):void {
            if( optionalArgs.length == 0 || optionalArgs[0]==0) {
                mLog.htmlText = mLog.htmlText + '<b>' + s + '</b><br>';
            }
            else if(optionalArgs[0]==-1) {
                mLog.htmlText = mLog.htmlText + '<font color=\"red\">' + s + '</font><br>';
            }
            else if(optionalArgs[0]==1) {
                mLog.htmlText = mLog.htmlText + '<span style=\"color:green\">' + s + '</span><br>';
            }
            else if(optionalArgs[0]==2) {
                mLog.htmlText = mLog.htmlText + '<span style=\"color:blue\">' + s + '</span><br>';
            }
            else {
                mLog.htmlText = mLog.htmlText + '<b>' + s + '</b><br>';
            }
        }

How to code font color?

SOLUTION

My mistake was I was using symbolic color names, while flash interpreter looks like do not understand them

Answer 1

This is actually a very easy problem to solve. RichTextEditor has a showControlBar setting, which if set to false, hides the fancy controls.

Also, you can access the internal text area and make it uneditable (myRTE.textArea.editable= false), restricting user interaction with the text.

Synopsis:

<mx:RichTextEditor id="myRTE" showControlBar="false"... />

...

myRTE.textArea.editable = false;

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Here’s a few resources for formatting your htmlText: Adobe ‘RichTextEditor Control’, Adobe ‘using htmlText properly’