textbox in a GUI

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=231890073597529&set=a.189231197863417.41143.100003296140487&type=1&theater

i wanted to create a gui using matlab, which is supposed to look lyk the pic above.. wanted to know, is it possible to have the desire text in a text box? secondly, will it be possible for me to get them scrolled down too ??

i learned about textboxes and annotations too..but i dont think they'll work here.

can it all be possible with matlab gui or i'll have to switch over to another language?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Usually "textbox" refers to uicontrol('style','text') . Putting a uicontrol in the middle of a graph is possible but not nice to work with.

text() can place text anywhere on an axes, including on a drawing of a "word ballon".

text() works in data coordinates, and is compatible with scrolling.

See http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/14984-scrollplot-scrollable-xy-axes

[Shree Nath]

problem is.. is there any inbuild function for drawing objects like ballons or anything else?

dont tell me i'll have to draw the balloon function..??

[Walter Roberson]

There is no inbuilt function for drawing balloons.

[Shree Nath]

can it take an image as the background ?

[Walter Roberson]

The scrollplot routine will scroll an image if it is part of the axes.

Note that it is not possible in MATLAB to place an image as part of "the background" to automatically appear under everything else and unaffected by the other graphics operations. images must always be placed in axes in MATLAB, so if you clear that axes (which happens automatically if you are not careful with "hold on") then the image would disappear.

It is possible to place the desired image into an axes and then do your other operations in a different axes on top of it -- provided that you do not try to subplot() which will delete existing axes that are underneath. Also you need to decide what you mean by "background" if you have an overlying plot: do you want to see the plot lines directly on top of the image? If so then you need to set the axes background color to 'none'

[Shree Nath]

okay sir, seems i should give up havin an image in the background with a text.

~~actually, i am reading text files from a folder, and then displaying them, as you may see what our 'mobile chatbox is like'- the received and sent messages in a diffrent color, and all of'em arranged chronologically.~~

 the new problem is, can i fix the width of a text box, whereas its height may vary according to the text contained inside?

[Walter Roberson]

See textwrap to do part of the work, to get the text to the right width. set() the control to that wrapped text. Then get() the Extent property of the control, and look at the height portion of the resulting vector (the third element): that will tell you how high the text box would have to be in order to fit the entire text. So then you can set() the box to be that high.