## VASSAL Reference Manual

Home > Module > Game Piece Palette > Game Piece > Text Label

### Text Label

This trait displays a text label on or near the piece. The text of the label can be fixed or specifiable by a player at game time.

Description: A description of the purpose of this label that is displayed in the Piece Definer.

Label Text: The starting value for the label text. The string entered in the Label Text field is evaluated as follows:

1. Check if the entered label is a Beanshell expression, then evaluate it as such.

2. Check if the entered label can be interpreted as is an integer. This is the case if the label only contains digits.

3. Check if the entered label is a $$ Variable Substitution (defined by a string enclosed between $ characters). This allows Properties of the piece to be substituted with $..$ notation, as in a Message Format

4. If no check is true the entered string is displayed.

A known limitation of the evaluation order above is that if you enter a sequence of digits starting with 0s, these will be removed when the string is evaluated as integer. A workaround to this is to enter the same string via a Beanshell expression. For example to display a sequence of 3 zeroes as label text you can use {"000"}. Note that the Beanshell expressions should be preferred to $$ Variable Substitutions. The latter are only available for historical reasons.

By enclosing the text within tags, you can use simple HTML format to specify various colors, fonts and sizes.

Example:

<html><b>Bold text</b><p>with a line break<p>and <font color=red>different</font> <font color=blue>colors</font></html> will display as:

Bold text
with a line break
and different colors

Name format:

  A Message Format that specifies how the name of this piece will be reported: pieceName is the name of the piece excluding the label, label is the value of the label text (including, unfortunately, HTML tags). If the label is empty, then the default name of the piece is always used unless the Use name format even when label is empty checkbox is selected. Note: the $pieceName$ reference here works differently from the PieceName property (see Basic Piece). PieceName (with the capital P) is used to retrieve the full name of the piece as evaluated via this Name Format field, and thus cannot be referenced in this field as it would produce an infinite loop. For this reason, in this field only, all attempts to reference PieceName are automatically assumed to be references to pieceName.

Use name format even when label is empty:

  If selected, the Name format will be evaluated even when the label is empty. Otherwise when the label is empty the default name of the piece is used.

Menu command:

  If not blank, gives the text of the corresponding menu item in the piece’s right-click context menu, selection of which will result in the text of the label being updated.

Menu command: If blank, the text of the label is permanent. If set, then gives the key command or Named Key Command to update the text of the label.

Font:

  The Text Label is drawn using this font.

*Font size

  / Bold / Italic:* The Text Label is drawn at this size, optionally in bold or italics.

Text color:

  The Text Label is drawn using this color.

Background color:

  The Text Label is drawn within a solid rectangle of this color. Click Select and then Cancel to use a transparent background.

Vertical Position:

  Draw the Text Label with the given offset from the top, bottom, or center of the piece.

Horizontal Position:

  Draw the Text Label with the given offset from the left, right, or center of the piece.

Vertical justification:

  Whether the top edge, bottom edge, or center of the Text Label will be drawn at the Horizontal Position specified above.

Horizontal justification:

  Whether the right edge, left edge, or center of the label will be drawn at the Vertical Position specified above.

Rotate Text:

  The text will be rotated clockwise by this angle. Rotation is performed after the horizontal/vertical justification and positioning specified above.

Property Name:

  The value of this label will be exposed as a Property with the given name.