Text frames with Colour backgrounds

[DMarshall]

Hi There,

 

I have a pending job (a couple of weeks away so a bit of time!) which I would love a bit of help with please.

 

Our customer is after variable Lanyards for a conference. There are 6 categories which attendees can fall under. Each attendee will belong to between 1 and 6 categories. Each category is named something different and the name and a coloured box around the name is to appear in a specific order listed below each other on the lanyards. Each category is a different colour and if the attendee doesn't belong to a particular category it is to be suppressed and the following categories moved up.

 

I immediately thought of doing these as individual text frames per category and colouring the background of the text frame, however my Java skills are almost non-existent and if this is the correct way to do it I need help.

 

Can anybody suggest something to me please??

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Dan

[Dan Korn]

The usual way to change the color of a text frame is to simply name the frame in the Frame Properties palette, then create the OnRecordStart callback rule and set the background color, for example:

FindTextFrame("Your frame name").fillColorName = "Red";

However, instead of changing the background of a single frame, it sounds like you need to have a set of text "areas," each with a name and a separate background color. This sounds more like a job for a table, where each row of the single-column table consists of a single cell with a category name and cell shading for the color. Something like this:

 

FPTable.prototype.NewRow = function()
{
   table.AddRows(1);
   return table.Rows[table.Rows.length-1];
}

var table = new FPTable;
var row = null; // FPTableRow
table.AddColumns(10000); // width of column in hundredths of points; 7200 = one inch

if (Field("Category 1") == "Yes") // if attendee belongs to category 1
{
   row = table.NewRow();
   row.Cells[0].Content = "Category 1";
   row.Cells[0].ShadeColor = "Red";
   row.Cells[0].ShadePct = 100;
}

if (Field("Category 2") == "Yes") // if attendee belongs to category 2
{
   row = table.NewRow();
   row.Cells[0].Content = "Category 2";
   row.Cells[0].ShadeColor = "Blue";
   row.Cells[0].ShadePct = 100;
}

// etc., etc.

return table.MakeTags();

You'll need to provide the logic in the "if" statements to determine whether the attendee is in each particular category, based on something in your data; I just guessed at that part.