FeatureRequest: Better tooling to start working with UniText

[wertyxboct]

This tool is great, but I feel strugling when need to first setup it.

1. Need to import font
2. Create appereance
3. Create material
4. Setup appereances material
5. Create FontStack

it's a bit tedious. And that's we not cross ways with Rules and other things. Like UPPER_CASE lower_case and other things that TMP has in it's editor.

I think it will be better, if appereance and font stack creates at import tool when you import font's. Maybe trough toggle "Create font stack" or similiar.
Also, I have a struggle with select font material, I don't know how to do that properly. Maybe there are documentation, that I not read properly yet, but in editor tooltips will help tremendously.

TMP has feature, that open window to import TMP Essentials, maybe this tool need similiar thing? But definityle not window, maybe some area with buttons, like Import Font, create appereance and default material.

[wertyxboct]

Maybe, we need to write some tool help with conversion of TMP to UniText, it will help tremendously. But I'm afraid that links to TMP in custom scripts will be broken. So this, need to think troughly. Like window, that search for all prefabs and scripts that uses TMP, and then can walk one-by-one, something fix automagically, something is can be fixed only by hand, but human need to track that changes, until it will be done.
Maybe need to search something that exists, to inspiration.

[LightSideMeowshop]

Oh, do you talk about migrator from TMP to UniText?

[LightSideMeowshop]

but I feel strugling when need to first setup it.

I understand the issue with configuration and I generally agree. I thought about it too and wanted to implement something simpler. But in the process I ran into the fact that it complicates the UniText API, and after a few hours of thinking I came to the conclusion that fonts and related settings are configured once for the entire lifetime of the project, so it’s a one-time pain. It’s not something developers do super often.

What do you think about this? I might be wrong in my reasoning, and I’d really appreciate it if you could help me sort this out. What do you think is the best approach, given everything I’ve said above?

[wertyxboct]

Yeah, you are right about that: "that fonts and related settings are configured once for the entire lifetime". And this is valid, but, this might scare away new users who aren't experienced enough to handle all of this. This will raise the barrier for those who just came to look around and poke at the project. Therefore, I think it's worth making some kind of window, even if it's not as intrusive as TMP's—maybe in the form of a help message in the UniText editor on the top of it.
Example:

You have two types of users:

1. Who don't know much of product, and just look around - they need to be stay motivated to stay there - and there are small tool that help to start, and ease a entry point.
2. Who struggle with TMP a lot (I'm) - they need tool to relieve their pain. Now to start UniText is a bit hard (but for experienced users is so-so). But second trouble they have if they want to test something, they need to integrate it instead of TMP. So there need tool to do so. I wan't to write that, but tough days on work :) maybe on weekend will try yo integrate UniText in our project, and will write some tooling, also I will share my experience.

[LightSideMeowshop]

Honestly, I don’t really understand why you call this “UniText configuration.” UniText is already set up by default and works out of the box with the default assets from the package. Could you please explain more clearly what you mean?

[wertyxboct]

Yeah. You must create two or three assets to start with your own settings, it very annoying and confusing. I think in many mature project we have something like I will show on screenshot, And finding UniText here is confusing (maybe it's just me).

Then, you should repeat that 3-4 times, because what that heck is all things.. and after that you learn that to create Font you should select font.

Okay, after you create font, you will open UniText component, and found that you can't select your font yet:

Because you need to create font stack... And you should open menu, to refresh your memory, to remember that there no font stack. But there are a Fonts (where fonts stack is? ah, that is a fonts, ahaha, I forget).
And thats how to spend 5-10 minutes doing manual, boring work, that can be automated.
After which you go to UniText component second time, and wonder why it's not working? Because there no material, you forget to create that. Wonderful.

Also:

• To use material, you should provide it, trough Appereance - okay
• To use gradient, you need... just create it? Idk how to use gradients, there no hole to put them. Obscure to me how to work with them right now.
• Why I can't change Atlas padding?

You have tool to work with font, why not create fonts, and fontstacks along with each other in one place?
Mod Register Config are quirky to fill (like formating rules, they not straightforward to work with). I think I understand how it works, but I don't think I really understand how they work. They don't have... type? Some modifiers can't work with all rules, or does it? It very strange thing. I struggle with it.

[LightSideMeowshop]

Okay, now I understand you. You’re absolutely right - a lot of things can feel non-obvious

In TMP, each font asset can have other fonts added to it to make fallback work, but conceptually that’s flawed and it creates a lot of limitations. With TMP’s approach, you explicitly bind one font to other fonts. So if you ever need the same font without fallback, you have to duplicate the font asset - which increases build/bundle size and generally clutters the project

That’s why UniText always works through a Font Stack. A Font Stack can contain a single font or multiple fonts to implement fallback. There’s also a separate Fallback Stack field so you don’t have to copy the same set of fallback fonts from one Font Stack to another every time

For example, you can create one Font Stack that contains all fonts for all languages your project supports. At the same time, you may want different primary font styles in different parts of the project. In that case, all you need to do is create a new Font Stack, add your new “style” font as the primary one, and assign your “all languages” Font Stack as the Fallback Stack. This ends up being a very flexible and convenient system

As for materials: this should also be a straightforward action for any Unity developer. Every developer should be able to create a material with the correct shader. If you’re not sure which shader you need, you can always look at the examples from the default resources - for instance, open the default UniTextAppearance, see which shader the default material uses, and do the same

Creating a separate material for every font isn’t a great practice - but TMP does it that way, so you expect UniText to work the same way. The point is: a single material can render all text in a project (if one material is enough for the project), so there’s no need to create a material for literally every font

UniText is a completely different text engine, and I designed it with all the problems I ran into in TMP in mind, specifically to avoid repeating them. I understand your pain, and I’m genuinely sorry you’re running into it - but like with any system, you need to first understand how to work with it before it feels natural

Maybe I should make a tutorial and implement what you suggested

I see it like this: when creating a font, I could offer the user to also create a UniTextFontStack and a UniTextAppearance. But then there’s a big risk of cluttering the project in cases where it wasn’t necessary - simply because the developer didn’t understand what they were doing

With TMP, I very often see developers duplicating font assets just to tweak material parameters, because they don’t understand how to assign a different material properly. TMP has a lot of issues too, and developers make plenty of mistakes when working with it. It feels somewhat inevitable

Just like you had to learn C# and Unity, you also need to learn UniText

[LightSideMeowshop]

ModRegisterConfig is designed so you don’t have to repeat the same rules and modifiers in every component. It makes things easier: you just add a ModRegisterConfig asset to the Mod Register Configs list, and it starts working as if you had manually added it to the Mod Registers list on the UniText component.

You can link any rule to any modifier, which gives you flexibility: different rules can share the same modifier.

For example, there are cases where a text contains both a Markdown link and a raw URL. Those are two different rules, but they use the same modifier. So you create a Composite Rule and add two rules to it: MarkdownLink and RawUrl.

[LightSideMeowshop]

About working with gradients, I made a critical mistake. The gradients config is located in Project Settings / UniText, but the UniText settings asset is inside the Packages folder, which isn’t editable. I’ll fix that, but below I’ll explain how to work with gradients

To work with gradients, you need to create the “Appearance/Gradient” modifier and add the “Tags/Gradient” rule. After that, you can write <gradient=rainbow,L>, where the first argument is the name of the gradient from the config located in UniTextSettings (UniText settings are in Project Settings → UniText). You can assign your own gradient config to that field and tweak its values to achieve the result you want

[LightSideMeowshop]

In conclusion, I’ll put it this way: TMP is indeed easier to learn, but the problem is that this simplicity comes from the fact that TMP isn’t designed for every possible use case or for how different companies and projects use text components. TMP is simpler simply because it doesn’t support the amount of functionality that UniText supports

[LightSideMeowshop]

How can I contact you? I’d like to suggest working together on improving UniText’s quality, so communication can be faster, more dynamic, and more convenient than here. Do you have Discord, Telegram, or anything else? Email me at malvislight@gmail.com

[wertyxboct]

First of all, I understand why you made those decisions, you don’t need to explain them in such detail :). I’m just trying to share my experience as a “newcomer” so you know where I stumbled and can think about how to improve it for those who come after (haha, Gustav).

In TMP, each font asset can have other fonts added to it to make fallback work, but conceptually that’s ...

Oh I understant WHY it's like that, and I support that. But it's just not transparent to end user and not so straightforward to start to work with.

As for materials: this should also be a straightforward action for any Unity developer...

Yeah, but you need to know that before you start to setup unitext component and need to do it. Also there so much shdaders, how to know what to pick? Look at documentation? Try all? It just not optimal. It breaks a flow.

But then there’s a big risk of cluttering the project in cases where it wasn’t necessary

Very valid point, I'm afraid that too. That need to be addressed somehow.

ModRegisterConfig ...

I understand that, and how to setup them, and why they like that. But work with them is a pain, because editor for them is bare minimum. For C# side - they great, you can provide what you want, where you want and need, I know, but for editor side they lack of guard rails, or any help from editor point of view.

About working with gradients, I made a critical mistake. ...

Oh, I read about how to use them in docs, but just not work with them yet. I know that they work trough modifiers and rules.

TMP is indeed easier to learn

I don't think so, it's just come with time, blood and sweat. Ahaha. I think TMP poorly designed by standards that not well aged. And also very bad supported by their owners. They added minimal functionality call it a day. I don't think that people support it now, tried to create a game with 16 or more languages and thousands lines of text, and put that in 150mb, a to not lost any symbols from that texts.

How can I contact you..

I'm wrote you a message.