Bigger, Bolder, More Purple – introducing rich text formatting

The 2024 implementation is coming along, but a beta is not quite ready yet. I plan to have a beta PDF available for you by the end of the coming week. This will probably not include all SRD content, the magic items and creatures are definitely not going to be finished by then, but on Friday I'll publish a sheet with everything that is done.

Before that time, I would like to ask for some feedback on a new feature that this 2024 version sheet will have.

Working on the 2024 stuff has inspired me to add a feature that I’ve had on my mind for a long time but never found the time or motivation to implement. Namely because it requires revisiting all short descriptions. As I’m having to do this anyway for the new edition, I figured why not finally bite the bullet.

This new feature is the ability to use rich text formatting in all multi-line fields. Rich text refers to text with formatting like bold, italic, and underlined. The options in Acrobat are rather limited, and the options for formatting through the JavaScript API are even more limiting. Hence, the approach I found works best is to use something akin to the markdown syntax, where control characters determine how something will be rendered. For the sheet I have defined the following:

*italic* = italic

**bold** = bold

_underlined_ = underlined

~strikethrough~ = strikethrough

#header# = bold and theme colour (colourful) or 10% size increase (printer friendly)

You can also combine these characters, for example:

***bold and italic*** = bold and italic

One of the many upsides of adding these formatting options is that the Class Features will no longer need to be indented to be readable, as you can see in the images of this post. This will make it much easier to transcribe class features for use in the sheet as it removes the need for manual line breaks and leading three spaces, thus allowing for more text to be displayed–less need for awkward wording.

This brings into question how to format these fields that are set by the automation. Are bullet points still the best solution? Bold only the name of the features, or its source reference as well? To help me decide this, please vote on this poll for subscribers.

For those subscribed to this Patreon, apologies for the two emails in a row, but please vote on the Poll how to format Class Features.

You can also download the MPMB Rich Text Tester.pdf to experiment with the new possibilities