<![CDATA[Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin]]>Hello,

I needed to be able to read a text file in Isadora so I wrote a plugin using the Isadora SDK. Thought it would be nice to share it ;) You will precisely know how to use it by reading the actor's help tooltips, but here is a summary: INPUTS: - file path (file to read) - linebreak mode used to write the file (Windows CR+LF, Unix LF, Mac CR) - read mode (whole text, only 1 character, only 1 line, only 1 paragraph) - start (When read mode is set to 'whole text' or 'char', this parameter will tell the actor from which character to begin reading. When read mode is set to 'line' or paragraph', you will be able to choose which line/paragraph number you will read.) - auto-read on input change (except linebreak mode and input triggers) - reset output trigger (clean the output text and 'file available' output on/off switch) - manual read trigger OUTPUTS: - output text - on/off parameter to tell the user if the given input file is readable - 'file has been read' trigger ABOUT LINEBREAKS: Depending on which OS is used to create the text file, new lines have a different format. More info here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_break_(computing)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_break_(computing)) Therefore, your file has to use proper formatting according to the OS under which you run Isadora (you can convert your text files using external advanced text editors). NOTE: This plugin has not been tested extensively, so there may still be bugs. In particular, it has only been tested under Windows, so if something doesn't work, just post it below and I'll check. IN THE ATTACHED ZIP FILE: - Windows DLL (just drop it into isadora_install_directory/Isadora Plugins) - 2 Visual studio 2010 source files, in case you want to convert it to xCode or just look a it Enjoy ;)

![faec48-scrshot.jpg](/uploads/files/FileUpload/b0/faec48-scrshot.jpg) [c0ce56-readtextfromfile-v1.0-pack.zip](/uploads/files/FileUpload/f1/c0ce56-readtextfromfile-v1.0-pack.zip)

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/topic/674/read-text-from-a-file-i-wrote-a-pluginRSS for NodeWed, 17 Jun 2026 15:56:36 GMTFri, 24 May 2013 00:16:33 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 08 Oct 2019 15:18:18 GMT]]>Dear Mark,

I was running for the evil clowns the last couple of days, but I am back and managed to grap the file. I just tried it again and now it seems to work. I didn't change a thing in my project. But anyway, here is the file I used to test it. I can imagine that it makes finding the problem a bit difficult. Thanks!

Adri

Text File

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37751https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37751Tue, 08 Oct 2019 15:18:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Thu, 03 Oct 2019 17:52:34 GMT]]>Dear @a3sh

Well, at least evil clowns didn't come into your living room. ;-)

Seriously, not sure what could be going wrong. Can you .zip and post the file you're trying to read.

That said, I'm on macOS Catalina compatibility duty for the next several days... so I may not be able to look into this immediately.

Best Wishes,
Mark

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37690https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37690Thu, 03 Oct 2019 17:52:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Wed, 02 Oct 2019 20:22:04 GMT]]>Hi everybody,

A nice coincidence that I was just working on a patch that could read texts from a file and just saw this forum thread updated a couple of days ago. I first tried the old plugin on version 2.6.1 of Isadora and later moved to Isadora 3 to try the new plugin Mark compiled. When I trigger the 'read' input Isadora crashes. Not always, but most of the times. Does anyone experienced this problem? Thanks!

I used Isadora 3 on a Lenovo Y520, with Core i7-7700HQ, 4 cores, Windows 10, 16 Gig Memory and a GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card

Best,

Adri

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37681https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37681Wed, 02 Oct 2019 20:22:04 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Mon, 30 Sep 2019 13:40:57 GMT]]>@mark said:

allow evil clowns to enter your living room

 Gimme!

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37619https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37619Mon, 30 Sep 2019 13:40:57 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Sun, 29 Sep 2019 19:57:38 GMT]]>@mark said:

allow evil clowns to enter your living room

That bit I don't have a problem with!

@mark thank you so much for that hour. Well spent, in my humble opinion! And yes, I will enjoy!

 

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37610https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37610Sun, 29 Sep 2019 19:57:38 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Sat, 28 Sep 2019 10:58:03 GMT]]>@mark_m said:

Sadly, it doesn't work with Isadora 3.

 It does now. ;-)

I spent a hour on Benoît's plugin this morning and recompiled it for Mac and Windows. 

Now, I have an "official" file reading plugin in waiting in the wings, which I've been wanting to get out. (I've been consumed by making sure Isadora 3 runs well on Catalina fixes this past week.) It does not, however, have the char/file/line/paragraph option that Benoît's plugin has.

One thing that for sure wouldn't have worked in the old version: if you have a fie path that included non ASCII characters liek ü, ø, ç, etc, it would not have opened the file. I've fixed that by updating Benoît's plugin to handle Unicode file paths.

But there's a few things that caught my eye as I examined the code. I don't quite understand why he would send output text using CR/LF line endings when the source file is CR/LF, because Isadora's going to have trouble parsing that: Isadora uses CR as a line ending internally, due to it's MacOS origins. And it seems a little ineffecient to me to read the file every time you change a char/line/paragraph number. I guess that's no big deal for small files, but what if it was huge?

Anyway, these critique notwithstanding, here's are the usual caveats: I didn't write it, it's not official, it may crash, blow up, or allow evil clowns to enter your living room. I do not have much time to repsond if there are bugs but hopefully it will "just work."

The updated source code is included.

Enjoy,
Mark

read-text-from-file-v1.0.zip (FOR ISADORA 3, 64 bit!)

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37591https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37591Sat, 28 Sep 2019 10:58:03 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Fri, 27 Sep 2019 22:45:06 GMT]]>@djinoui

@Woland @mark 

This readtextfromfile plugin is one I've utilised extensively in a number of projects.
Sadly, it doesn't work with Isadora 3.
Is there an easy way to update it, or recompile it, or whatever, so that it does?

I realise that there are other solutions available, but I do like this one :-)

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37589https://community.troikatronix.com/post/37589Fri, 27 Sep 2019 22:45:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Wed, 25 Jan 2017 06:55:12 GMT]]>Glad to read this, as I didn't test it with Isadora 2! Happy VJing!

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/22629https://community.troikatronix.com/post/22629Wed, 25 Jan 2017 06:55:12 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Mon, 23 Jan 2017 23:02:46 GMT]]>Thanks for this plugin. It works great, even in 2017 with the latest version of Izzy! Just what I needed.

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/22618https://community.troikatronix.com/post/22618Mon, 23 Jan 2017 23:02:46 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Thu, 03 Sep 2015 12:41:47 GMT]]>pretty cool actor
thx

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/16986https://community.troikatronix.com/post/16986Thu, 03 Sep 2015 12:41:47 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:07:45 GMT]]>OK, keep me updated if you manage to reproduce the bug.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't be surprised if it was related to file encoding. Or even special characters in the input path.
]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11788https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11788Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:07:45 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:40:52 GMT]]>OK, spoke to soon... some fiddling.. and it works again.. I think it has to do with the init settings for the plugin. I didn't really change anything and its working, so I think that I simply saved a happy value into an input when I updated my user actor.

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11786https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11786Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:40:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:06:07 GMT]]>Yeah.. just did a quick test, and I still crash.. 
I will try to create a simple version for testing.. to make sure (the patch I have thats using it is pretty complex)

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11783https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11783Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:06:07 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:49:18 GMT]]>After installing 1.5.3f25 (latest pre-release) on the W8.1 virtual PC, everything seems to be back to normal again.

Could you please tell me if you still get a crash with this version?
]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11781https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11781Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:49:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 07:21:42 GMT]]>@djinoui 
thats good to know..  I wasn't entirely sure it was the cause.

If you get around to it I would be very grateful.
]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11555https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11555Fri, 04 Jul 2014 07:21:42 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Thu, 03 Jul 2014 13:10:57 GMT]]>@DusX

Yes, I just installed Windows 8.1 on VirtualBox, I'm also getting a crash. I don't have much time these days but I'll try to install VC++ and investigate about this.
]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11554https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11554Thu, 03 Jul 2014 13:10:57 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Thu, 03 Jul 2014 04:44:33 GMT]]>Wow Jacques. Very creative solution!!!!

As always ;-)
]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11550https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11550Thu, 03 Jul 2014 04:44:33 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Wed, 02 Jul 2014 16:44:42 GMT]]>@djinoui 
Have you tested the plugin on Windows 8 or 8.1?

I have a project that is using it that now crashes shortly after the text read.. (on all installed versions. inc, both the stable release and pre-release)
Strangely no error report is created, just a windows prompt that its crashed and windows will try to find a solution. 
So debugging is a little slow.

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11548https://community.troikatronix.com/post/11548Wed, 02 Jul 2014 16:44:42 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 13 May 2014 22:48:51 GMT]]>Personaly, I use a quicktime text movie, you can use belle-nuit subtitle software to translate .srt to quickTime text and then QuickTime 7 pro to obtain a QT movie. You can also write the QT text yourself, using text edit.

Played in Isadora, you can activate the text track and use text/draw actor to screen it.
If you need to slave it to entering timecode, as MTC, you can use MTC reader. If you need to slave to another movie, you can slave it via position
I send you a patch in Isadora (pre-release version), with subtitles in text and QT.
A little bit easier…
Hope that helps,
jhoepffner

26cf11-testsubtitles.zip

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10969https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10969Tue, 13 May 2014 22:48:51 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 13 May 2014 04:08:27 GMT]]>Ok, there is one problem, I had a quick go and you have to do a fair bit of work but the last step I cannot get around is that the timecodes come in as text not numbers. everything else is solvable but getting the time right. When I read the timecode from a standard .srt file you get this

00:02:17,575 --> 00:02:19,065

It is a tricky bit, I think using the text chopper you can then do the addition of the times as time code, I used the timecode comparator and you have to do some strange stuff but basically, in the timecode actor seconds are actually split into 256, so if you chop and parse each number from the line that has the time in and out and then work out the total time in seconds, multiply by 256 and then compare it with the current time...... kind of annoying to do. You may be better off trying to modify the above user actor to do it.

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10966https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10966Tue, 13 May 2014 04:08:27 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 13 May 2014 03:13:00 GMT]]>I guess so , read the time code, compare it to the incoming time code from the movie and display it if it is within the range, read the next code etc. There is a bunch of text parsing to do but I cant see a reason you cant get this going.

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10965https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10965Tue, 13 May 2014 03:13:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Tue, 13 May 2014 00:12:21 GMT]]>So, what about the time code. Do you think that can it be synchronized a video?

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10960https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10960Tue, 13 May 2014 00:12:21 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Mon, 12 May 2014 06:20:34 GMT]]>Essentially it is a text file, change the extension and it should work fine.

]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10956https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10956Mon, 12 May 2014 06:20:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Read text from a file : I wrote a plugin on Mon, 12 May 2014 04:11:03 GMT]]>Does anybody if it's possible to work with a srt (subtitles) archive with any Isadora plugin?

The point is that I want to project subtitles but synchronized with a timecode…
]]>https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10952https://community.troikatronix.com/post/10952Mon, 12 May 2014 04:11:03 GMT