Markup

Markup allows you to add attributes into your text, like [a]hello[/a]. These attributes can be used by your game to do things like change the formatting of the text, add animations, and more.

When text is parsed, the tags are removed from the text, and you receive information about the range of the plain text that the attributes apply to.

Attributes

Attributes apply to ranges of text:

Oh, [wave]hello[/wave] there!

The Dialogue.ParseMarkup method will take this text, and produce two things: the plain text, and a collection of attributes. The plain text is the text without any markers; in this example it will be:

Oh, hello there!

Attributes represent ranges of the plain text that have additional information. They contain a position, a length, and their name, as well as their properties.

In this example, a single attribute will be generated, with a position of 4, a length of 5, and a name of “wave”.

Attributes are opened like [this], and closed like [/this].

Overlapping Attributes

Attributes can overlap:

You can put multiple attributes inside each other. For example:

Oh, [wave]hello [bounce]there![/bounce][/wave]

You can close an attribute in any order you like. For example, this has the same meaning as the previous example:

Oh, [wave]hello [bounce]there![/wave][/bounce]

Self-closing Attributes

Attributes can self-close:

[wave/]

A self-closing attribute has a length of zero.

The Close-All Marker

The marker [/] is the close-all marker. It closes all currently open attributes. For example:

[wave][bounce]Hello![/]

Properties

Attributes can have properties:

[wave size=2]Wavy![/wave]

This attribute ‘wave’ has a property called ‘size’, which has an integer value of 5.

Short-hand Properties

Attributes can have short-hand properies, like so:

[wave=2]Wavy![/wave]

This attribute ‘wave’ has a property called ‘wave’, which has an integer value of 2. The name of the attribute is taken from the first property.

Property Types

Properties can be any of the following types:

• Integers
• Floats
• ‘true’ or ‘false’
• Strings

Single words without quote marks are parsed as strings. For example, the two following lines are identical:

[mood=angry]Grr![/mood]
[mood="angry"]Grr![/mood]

Whitespace Trimming

If a self-closing attribute has white-space before it, or it’s at the start of the line, then it will trim a single whitespace after it. This means that the following text produces a plain text of “A B”:

A [wave/] B

If you don’t want to trim whitespace, add a property trimwhitespace, set to false:

A [wave trimwhitespace=false/] B (produces "A  B")

The nomarkup Attribute

The nomarkup attribute makes the parser ignore any markup characters inside it.

If you want to include characters like [ and ], wrap them in the nomarkup attribute:

A [nomarkup];][/nomarkup] B (produces "A ;] B")

The character Attribute

The character attribute is used to mark the part of the line that identifies the character that’s speaking.

Yarn Spinner will attempt to add this character for you, by looking for character names in lines that look like this:

CharacterA: Hello!
CharacterB: Oh, hi!

The markup parser will mark everything from the start of the line up to the first : (and any trailing whitespace after it) with the character attribute. This attribute has a property, name, which contains the text from the start of the line up to the :. If a : isn’t present, or a character attribute has been added in markup, it won’t be added.

This means that the example above is treated the same as this:

[character name="CharacterA"]CharacterA: [/character]Hello!
[character name="CharacterB"]CharacterB: [/character]Oh hi!

You can use this to trim out the character names from lines in your game.

Markup and Format Functions

Markup replaces Yarn Spinner v1.1’s format functions. Format functions are now implemented as self-closing markers; the LineParser class’s RegisterMarkerProcessor method allows you to register certain markers as “replacing” markers, which the line parser will call out to your code to fetch the text to insert into the final, composed line. The nomarkup, select, plural, and ordinal markers are implemented in this way.

This means that your format functions need to be changed slightly to match the new format.

Previously:

[select {$gender} m="he" f="she" nb="they"]
[plural {$pies} one="pie" other="pies"]
[plural {$position} one="%st" two="%nd" few="%rd" other="%th"]

Now:

[select value={$gender} m="he" f="she" nb="they" /]
[plural value={$pies} one="pie" other="pies" /]
[plural value={$position} one="%st" two="%nd" few="%rd" other="%th" /]

Additionally, you will need to set the Dialogue.LocaleCode property to a locale code, like en.