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Multi-line tooltips

Posted By Yair Altman On November 2, 2011 | 5 Comments

I often use tooltips in my Matlab GUIs. They are a fantastically intuitive and unobtrusive visual helper for users to understand the GUI. In this blog, I have already posted several articles about how to tweak tooltip contents (here [1], here [2], and here [3]). Today I would like to expand on one of the aspects that were already covered, namely that of multi-line tooltips.

Basic multi-line tooltips

The basic multi-line tooltip consists of a simple string that includes the newline character. for example:

set(hControl, 'TooltipString', ['this is line 1' 10 'and this is line 2'])

Or better (platform independent):

set(hControl, 'TooltipString', sprintf('this is line 1\nand this is line 2'))

A simple multi-line tooltip string
A simple multi-line tooltip string

As can be seen, this is very simple to set up. Unfortunately, the font cannot be customized. Which leads us to:

HTML-rendered multi-line tooltips

Tooltips, like most other Matlab controls, supports HTML rendering [4]. This is a natural corollary of the fact that Java Swing, on which all Matlab controls are based, automatically supports HTML [5]. All we need to do is to add ‘<HTML>‘ at the very beginning of our tooltip string, and then we can embed HTML tags within the rest of the string:

set(hControl, 'tooltipString', 'line #1
line#2');

Multi-line HTML'ed tooltip
Multi-line HTML'ed tooltip

And a more sophisticated example, used within my createTable utility [6] on the File Exchange:
A more complex multi-line HTML-based tooltip
A more complex multi-line HTML-based tooltip

Note that there is no need to close the final HTML tags in the tooltip string, although it’s not an error to do so (as I have done above).

The problem with formatted multi-line tooltip

Unfortunately, none of these two methods work when we wish to display formatted multi-line tooltips. For example, suppose that we wish to display struct data in a tooltip:

>> myData = struct('a',pi, 'b',-4, 'very_long_field_name','short txt')
myData =
                       a: 3.14159265358979
                       b: -4
    very_long_field_name: 'short txt'
>> myDataStr = evalc('disp(myData)');
>> set(hControl, 'TooltipString', myDataStr);

Badly-formatted multi-line tooltip
Badly-formatted multi-line tooltip

If we try to use HTML, the result looks even worse, because if the HTML-renderer detects a newline character embedded in the string, it simply uses the regular (non-HTML) renderer:

set(hControl, 'TooltipString', ['' myDataStr ''])

Failure to parse a string using HTML
Failure to parse a string using HTML

Even if we fix this by replacing all line-separators with ‘<br/>‘, we still get a badly-formatted tooltip, because HTML ignores all white spaces:

>> myDataStr2 = strrep(myDataStr, sprintf('\n'), '
');
>> set(hControl, 'TooltipString', ['' myDataStr2 ''])

Badly-formatted multi-line tooltip
Badly-formatted multi-line tooltip

(you can see that it’s HTML-formatted by the fact that the tooltip contents do not have internal margins like in the non-HTML tooltip above)

Fixed-width font multi-line tooltips

We now recall the HTML <pre> tag, which tells HTML not to ignore white-spaces. In most web browsers, it also defaults to using a fixed-width font. Unfortunately, this is not the case here:

set(hControl, 'TooltipString', ['
' myDataStr2])


Still not quite right...
Still not quite right...


Which brings us to the final customization of the day, namely explicitly forcing the tooltip to use a fixed-width font:


set(hControl, 'TooltipString', ['
' myDataStr2 ''])


Finally - a well-formatted multi-line tooltip
Finally - a well-formatted multi-line tooltip


Even more powerful customizations can be achieved using CSS rather than pure HTML. This will be discussed a future article.




Related posts:
    

  1. Multi-line uitable column headers  [7] – Matlab uitables can present long column headers in multiple lines, for improved readability. ...
    2. 

  2. Spicing up Matlab uicontrol tooltips  [8] – Matlab uicontrol tooltips can be spiced-up using HTML and CSS, including fonts, colors, tables and images...
    3. 

  3. Inactive Control Tooltips & Event Chaining  [9] – Inactive Matlab uicontrols cannot normally display their tooltips. This article shows how to do this with a combination of undocumented Matlab and Java hacks....
    4. 

  4. Explicit multi-threading in Matlab part 2  [10] – Matlab performance can be improved by employing .Net (C#, VB, F# or C++) threads. ...
    5. 

  5. Multi-column (grid) legend  [11] – This article explains how to use undocumented axes listeners for implementing multi-column plot legends...
    6. 

  6. Explicit multi-threading in Matlab part 4  [12] – Matlab performance can be improved by employing timer objects and spawning external processes. ...
    7.

Categories: GUI, Low risk of breaking in future versions, Stock Matlab function, Undocumented feature

5 Comments (Open | Close)

5 Comments To "Multi-line tooltips"

#1 Pingback By Undocumented Profiler options part 2 | Undocumented Matlab On September 24, 2012 @ 03:24

[…] recall my related article last year, where I showed how to convert a proportional-font multi-line tooltip […]

#2 Comment By Simon On April 29, 2019 @ 17:25

Does anyone know if multi line tooltips are possible for Digraph plots?

This strategy doesn’t appear to work…

#3 Comment By Yair Altman On June 20, 2019 @ 14:28

@Simon – I assume that you mean the data-tip that is displayed next to the nodes in a digraph plot – this is not a tooltip but a data-tip (also called a datacursor): tooltips (which are the topic of this article) are Java components that are displayed next to Java GUI controls (buttons, checkboxes, editboxes etc.). In contrast, data-tips are non-Java graphic areas that are only displayed within graphic axes and use a completely different technology. Datacursor popups are not tooltips and they do not support HTML, although they do support Tex/Latex (like other graphics/axes text objects).

Basic customizations of the data-tip text is supported and [13]; I described [14] in other articles.

#4 Comment By Ozgu On June 18, 2019 @ 22:14

Hi Yair

Can we adjust the position of the TooltipString?

#5 Comment By Yair Altman On June 20, 2019 @ 14:09

@Ozgu – you cannot control tooltip position for Matlab controls. You can only do this with custom Java components in which you overload the getToolTipLocation() method.

Article printed from Undocumented Matlab: https://undocumentedmatlab.com

URL to article: https://undocumentedmatlab.com/articles/multi-line-tooltips

URLs in this post:

[1] here: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/spicing-up-matlab-uicontrol-tooltips/

[2] here: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/additional-uicontrol-tooltip-hacks/

[3] here: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/inactive-control-tooltips-event-chaining/

[4] supports HTML rendering: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/html-support-in-matlab-uicomponents/

[5] automatically supports HTML: http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/components/html.html

[6] createTable utility: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/14225-java-based-data-table

[7] Multi-line uitable column headers : https://undocumentedmatlab.com/articles/multi-line-uitable-column-headers

[8] Spicing up Matlab uicontrol tooltips : https://undocumentedmatlab.com/articles/spicing-up-matlab-uicontrol-tooltips

[9] Inactive Control Tooltips & Event Chaining : https://undocumentedmatlab.com/articles/inactive-control-tooltips-event-chaining

[10] Explicit multi-threading in Matlab part 2 : https://undocumentedmatlab.com/articles/explicit-multi-threading-in-matlab-part2

[11] Multi-column (grid) legend : https://undocumentedmatlab.com/articles/multi-column-grid-legend

[12] Explicit multi-threading in Matlab part 4 : https://undocumentedmatlab.com/articles/explicit-multi-threading-in-matlab-part4

[13] : https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_plots/create-custom-data-tips.html

[14] : https://undocumentedmatlab.com/?s=datacursormode

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