Hiding AutoText when no data

[Paul King]

Hi - in sheet and drawing titles, how can I prevent unwanted display of the auto text field name when that autotext field as yet has no data?

Currently, if there is no data for a field, instead of showing no data (i.e leaving blank) as it should, the field displays the Auto Text field name itself - which is obviously unacceptable, and looks very unprofessional.

[David Maudlin]

Paul:

One option is to put just a space in the auto text entry.

David

[Erwin Edel]

After the entry ussually, to keep formatting. But this is what we do as well.

Although, not all autotext entries work this way with showing the #AutoText thingy.

[Paul King]

By 'entry', do you guys mean manually adding a space to each item in the Info menu? (how would you deal with calculated feilds?, like back reference, scale etc that are context dependant?), or do you mean adding a space in the placed text string on the drawing before or after the autotext token?

If the autotext is intended to be centred, or needs to fit in a narrow space, would adding a space not mess that formating up?

I was hoping there might be a global preference, or maybe even registry setting somewhere to control this behavior, that might avoid the need to spot and manually work around every instance of misbehaviour?

[Erwin Edel]

You replace the 'space' when you fill out the fields.

We also have some 'Name Client', 'City' etc texts filled out in our template just to have the fields filled.

Sorry for creating misunederstanding with 'after the field'. Slight case of language barrier working two ways there for me.

I am pretty sure that the autotext fields we use from Layout Info Scheme don't show up with the field name when empty.

[Paul King]

Thanks Irwin - inserting a space is my normal workaround too - but it is a pain that I should need to. I was hoping for a global setting somewhere.

I am a freelancer and tend to inherit other people's projects - which are usually not pre populated with spaces in the project info menu.

I think this should be an easy wish for GS to implement - when there is no data, show no data....

[Barry Kelly]

Paul wrote:
I think this should be an easy wish for GS to implement - when there is no data, show no data....

I guess the problem will be then that if there is no text showing because the value is empty, you won't be able to see the text to select it if ever you need to.
The same will happen if you just use a space for an empty value.
You will have to know exactly where to find it.
I know in most cases you will not be wanting to select the text - you are just waiting for it to self populate with the correct data.
But how will you know it is there if you can't see it?

I would prefer to see the auto text so I know there is something missing that needs to have a value added to it.
Or as Erwin suggested use a value such as "client name" when there is no client name yet.

Barry.

[Paul King]

I presume you would still have the selection dots for the unpopulated field.
You could even make the dots another colour, so you see at a glance that this is an auto text field, that could benefit from populating, and have a tooltip drop down on mouse hover to identify the autotext field ID.

Even better, you would be able to enter the info directly into the field on the spot, once known, and have this info reflected in the database.

Even better again, the field could accept on the fly conditional arguments. for those rare occasions where that might be useful - for example, display the current date with a suffix 'info only', or 'in-progress' or similar if this print date does not coincide with a formal issue date.

[Lingwisyer]

Rather than making them blank, should they not just be made to be transparent when plotting or publishing ideally?

[Paul King]

Correct - by 'blank' I was really meaning to say empty, rather than 'solid white' (which I suppose is the more literal translation from French word 'blanc')