Spaces are counted in RichTextLabel but not Label when using get_total_character_count()

[TheRadMatt]

Godot version:
3.1

There are differences in how richtextlabel and label hadle spaces in their texts. richtextlabel counts spaces when using get_total_character_count() while label does not:

This isn't that much of a problem because you can just use text.length() BUT when you use label.visible_characters += 1, that becomes a problem. For examle I wrote a system that shows the same text for both of those nodes and it works only with one of them at a time because each node handles spaces differently.

This is very annoying and messy. It would be great if both of them counted spaces.

[toger5]

maybe renaming both to get_visible_character_count (and let them behave that way)
and for total count use text.length()?

[bergmannf]

I was taking a look at this, but I haven't worked with the codebase before, so maybe my comment is wrong - so take it with a grain of salt, but: it seems at least the change to label was deliberate to not include spaces (and that is also documented):

922f2d6

This fix was in response to #23720

Maybe it would make more sense to update rich_text_label instead to make it behave like label?
However - the docs for the rich_text_label do not say that it excludes whitespace so that (right now) also seems deliberate.

[Ranoller]

Well, today i found that after some headache hours....
I think this is a bug. Space is a visible character. You can´t compare your strings.length() or the Label.text with the visible characters, and that is very bad. A workaround is count the " " in every text and sub that to the character count to get the real visible characters....
tricky and bad...
very bad...
There should be an option to not ignore spaces, or directly not ignore by default (not good reason to do that)... or this incoherence between RichTextLabel and Label should be very well documented (But I still think that there is not good reason for this behavior).

[elizaho]

I would like to work on this.

[Calinou]

@elizaho It seems nobody is currently working on a fix, so go ahead 🙂

[elizaho]

What are the steps to reproduce this error?

[Janglee123]

@elizaho Create a rich text label and label with the same text above and use get_total_character_count() function for both of them.

[elizaho]

get_total_character_count returns 0 for a non-empty RichTextLabel. Is this expected behaviour?

get_node("RTLabelCount").text = str(get_node("RichTextLabel").get_total_character_count())

[Calinou]

If you've set the text immediately before calling get_total_character_count(), you may have to wait a frame for the value to be valid. This is because RichTextLabel isn't fully synchronous (#36381).

Use yield(get_tree(), "idle_frame") before calling get_total_character_count() to wait for a frame.

[Xascoria]

Just ran into this problem, would definitely love to have at least an alternate option to include space on Label/exclude space on RichTextLabel

[Lucas3H]

In 4.0 version this function "get_total_character_count()" return equal values for both Label and RichTextLabel, but it counts spaces and the documentation says it doesn't. Can I try to fix the function or is it better to just change the documentation?

[Calinou]

In 4.0 version this function "get_total_character_count()" return equal values for both Label and RichTextLabel, but it counts spaces and the documentation says it doesn't. Can I try to fix the function or is it better to just change the documentation?

See #37969 which modifies Label's character counting to include spaces.

Either way, I think this should be discussed in a proposal since this would change either functions' behaviors (and is therefore a compatibility-breaking change). My suggestions would be:

• For master, make both Label and RichTextLabel include spaces by default in their respective character counting functions. Add an optional include_spaces boolean parameter that defaults to true; set it to false to exclude spaces from the character counting.
• For 3.x, add an optional include_spaces boolean parameter that defaults to false for Label and true for RichTextLabel. Set it to false to exclude spaces from the character counting. Explicitly document the default behavior difference in the class reference.

[Lucas3H]

In 4.0 version this function "get_total_character_count()" return equal values for both Label and RichTextLabel, but it counts spaces and the documentation says it doesn't. Can I try to fix the function or is it better to just change the documentation?

See #37969 which modifies Label's character counting to include spaces.

Either way, I think this should be discussed in a proposal since this would change either functions' behaviors (and is therefore a compatibility-breaking change). My suggestions would be:

* For `master`, make both Label and RichTextLabel include spaces by default in their respective character counting functions. Add an optional `include_spaces` boolean parameter that defaults to `true`; set it to `false` to exclude spaces from the character counting.

* For `3.x`, add an optional `include_spaces` boolean parameter that defaults to `false` for Label and `true` for RichTextLabel. Set it to `false` to exclude spaces from the character counting. Explicitly document the default behavior difference in the class reference.

Ah, sorry for the ignorance, I thought that this PR #37969 was not merged yet, so the function hasn't changed...

Anyway, I'll try to do what you have said. Thanks a lot!