Change Color of each individual String in a Listbox ?
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Hey Guys,
I want to give each Word in my List box an specific color. My mentor said: its not possible. Now I ask here: is it possible to chose the Color of Listbox text with the RGB system ?
Accepted Answer
Data(1).name = 'red';
Data(1).Color = [255 0 0];
Data(2).name = 'green';
Data(2).Color = [0 255 0];
Data(3).name = 'blue';
Data(3).Color = [0 0 255];
pre = '<HTML><FONT color="';
post = '</FONT></HTML>';
listboxStr = cell(numel( Data ),1);
for i = 1:numel( Data )
str = [pre rgb2Hex( Data(i).Color ) '">' Data(i).name post];
listboxStr{i} = str;
end
figure; hListBox = uicontrol('Style','list', 'Position', [20 20 100 100], 'String', listboxStr );
That should give you an example of what you want with the following function defined based on Guillame's input above :
function hexStr = rgb2Hex( rgbColour )
hexStr = reshape( dec2hex( rgbColour, 2 )',1, 6);
Obviously if you have a pre-existing listbox from Guide you can just do the usual:
set( handles.listbox1, 'String', listboxStr )
instead of creating a new listbox.
9 Comments
Max Müller
on 2 Sep 2014
Max Müller
on 2 Sep 2014
That is a function that I created which is underneath the other code in the post above. Just paste that function into a file (the .m file of your GUI will do if that is where you are calling the code from or its own file if you want).
You can just put the code directly into the for loop, I just prefer to factor out into a function because it looks a mess with all that code in the 'str = ...' line
Guillaume
on 2 Sep 2014
Note that you don't need the num2str) in rgb2Hex, the output of dec2hex (and thus reshape) is already a string.
Adam
on 2 Sep 2014
Thanks. Yes, that's true, I didn't even look at the output before throwing that in! Corrected now.
Max Müller
on 3 Sep 2014
Edited: Max Müller
on 3 Sep 2014
Adam
on 3 Sep 2014
Just multiply by 255
Max Müller
on 3 Sep 2014
Guillaume
on 3 Sep 2014
The colours and names are embedded in the strings, so you could parse them:
liststrings = get(hlistbox, 'string');
colnames = regexp(liststrings, 'color="(.*)">(.*)</FONT', 'tokens', 'once');
data = cell2struct(reshape([colnames{:}], 2, []), {'color', 'name'});
More Answers (4)
Adam
on 1 Sep 2014
Slightly modified example of code Yair Altman posted many years ago:
figure; uicontrol('Style','list', 'String', ...
{'<HTML><FONT color="red">Red</FONT></HTML>', ...
'<HTML><FONT color="green">Green</FONT></HTML>', ...
'<HTML><FONT color="blue">Blue</FONT></HTML>'} );
7 Comments
Max Müller
on 1 Sep 2014
Adam
on 1 Sep 2014
It's just using the fact that underlying Matlab UI controls are Java controls and you can do things like use HTML markup in those.
You can also do things like create a multi-line Pushbutton string which I have often found useful, using HTML.
Image Analyst
on 1 Sep 2014
Yair Altman
on 4 Sep 2014
Edited: Yair Altman
on 4 Sep 2014
Here's an article explaining all this: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/html-support-in-matlab-uicomponents
And related code/images (note that it's case-insensitive and that you don't have to close the HTML tags):
uicontrol('Style','list', 'Position',[10,10,70,70], 'String', ...
{'<HTML><FONT color="red">Hello</Font></html>', 'world', ...
'<html><font style="font-family:impact;color:green"><i>What a', ...
'<Html><FONT color="blue" face="Comic Sans MS">nice day!</font>'});
Keqin Xu
on 31 Oct 2019
Trouble is, when there are "<" in the string, the "<" are all missing in the listbox!
Any ideas to fix it? Thanks!
Adam
on 1 Nov 2019
You can use <, > for < and >
Max Müller
on 1 Sep 2014
0 votes
4 Comments
Adam
on 1 Sep 2014
I'm not really familiar with HTML myself, I just learn on a "need to know" basis. I know you can use hex colour codes (I did it myself for the first time last week) rather than named colours, but I'm not sure about RGB colours...
Guillaume
on 1 Sep 2014
Well, hex colour code is just red, green, blue (in that order) encoded as 2 bytes hexadecimal on a scale of 0 to 255.
e.g: red = 0, green = 126 (7E), blue = 255 (FF) => hex = 007EFF
Adam
on 1 Sep 2014
dec2hex( [r g b] )
should help convert between the two, although you have to scoop up the 3 rows of the result into a single string to put into the html string.
Guillaume
on 2 Sep 2014
That would be:
reshape(dec2hex([r g b], 2)',1, 6)
Max Müller
on 2 Sep 2014
0 votes
1 Comment
Image Analyst
on 2 Sep 2014
Max, this is not an official "Answer" to your original question. If anything, it should have been a Comment to some other response.
Max Müller
on 2 Sep 2014
0 votes
2 Comments
Adam
on 2 Sep 2014
Please don't keep adding new questions as answers, it is confusing.
You can define the colour of independent static text objects easily enough (or indeed any independent objects like that if they are predefined).
If you want to have different coloured backgrounds or text in a listbox or uitable or similar though then I'm not aware of any alternative to using html and/or the underlying java UI programming as discussed in previous answers.
If you can explain which element of the suggested solution you are having a problem with we can assist further on that.
Max Müller
on 2 Sep 2014
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