Combining appendText and htmlText for dynamic text box in AS3 - actionscript-3

Question

Hi I browsed the web and this web page for answer but can't seem to find solution for my problem. I've created a typewriter effect. It's being displayed through dynamic text box(tekst_txt). What I would like to achieve is to be able to use html tags to change specific word's font to bold or italic by just including i.e. < b > and < /b > but I can't seem to pull this of. I would really appreciate some advice.
That is code that shows up in first frame (text box doesn't exist on that frame):
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
stop();
var tekst:String = "";
var i:uint = 0;
var licznik:Timer = new Timer(20);
tekst_txt.htmlText = tekst_txt.text;
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, klikaj);
function klikaj(event:MouseEvent):void
{
if (licznik.running == true)
{
tekst_txt.htmlText = tekst;
licznik.stop();
}
else if (licznik.running == false || licznik == null)
{
nextFrame();
tekst_txt.text = "";
}
}
And this is code from next frame(textbox already exist in this frame):
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
stop();
tekst="Tekst1Tekst1<i>Tekst1</i>Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1";
licznik.start();
licznik.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, odpalaj);
function odpalaj(e:TimerEvent):void
{
//tekst_txt.htmlText = tekst_txt.text;
tekst_txt.appendText(tekst.charAt(i));
//tekst_txt.htmlText=tekst_txt.text;
i++;
if (i >= tekst.length)
{
licznik.stop();
}
}

Answer 1

The problem you are facing is that any form of HTML formatting will take more than 1 character to describe, so when you try to do this animation character by character, you are really just setting the raw html markup into the text.
This may seem a bit messy, but here's something you can try...
You would create a temporary textfield and set the whole html markup text into its htmlText value first, then you can getTextFormat to copy the formatting for every character as you are appending... this allows Flash to process the html for you.
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
stop();
tekst="Tekst1Tekst1<i>Tekst1</i>Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1Tekst1";
// shove your html markup text into the htmlText of a textfield
// this allows Flash to deal with parsing the html
var myTextField:TextField = new TextField();
myTextField.htmlText = tekst;
licznik.start();
licznik.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, odpalaj);
function odpalaj(e:TimerEvent):void
{
// get the text directly from the temp textfield
// you want to do this because it will have already processed the html markup
// and will give you the correct indexes and length of your text
tekst_txt.appendText(myTextField.text.charAt(i));
// copy the textformat
var format:TextFormat = myTextField.getTextFormat(i, i+1);
tekst_txt.setTextFormat(format, i, i+1);
i++;
if (i >= tekst.length)
{
licznik.stop();
}
}