I don't read so good. Help me read gooder.

November 6, 2008 3:02 PM

OSX application for displaying text as one line and scrolling it sideways - like a news ticker?

Is there an application for OSX (Tiger) that will let me paste in text and then display it as one long line, scrolling it sideways? Like a news ticker, but with text that I paste in/select? My Google-fu has failed me.

posted by djgh to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: I could write something that literally does what you want in like five minutes. I'd do it in Flash and save it as a OSX executable. That's all you want it to do?
posted by grumblebee at 3:18 PM on November 6, 2008

There's the HTML "marquee" tag, which you could use in your own file and display in a full-screen browser.
posted by Class Goat at 3:20 PM on November 6, 2008

You could easily build an HTML file with the marquee tag and display it in Safari-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquee_tag
posted by wongcorgi at 3:23 PM on November 6, 2008

Response by poster: grumblebee, that would be amazing if you could. Reasonably large text would be preferable as well. Without wishing to look a gift horse in the mouth, would there be any chance of a speed control being included?...

Sorry if I'm being picky
posted by djgh at 3:41 PM on November 6, 2008

I'll make it and upload it. I should have time tonight. When I'm done, I'll post a link.
posted by grumblebee at 3:59 PM on November 6, 2008

Best answer: Mac and PC version.
posted by grumblebee at 6:37 PM on November 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

The marquee tag is a non-standard HTML markup element type which causes text to scroll up, down, left or right. The tag was first introduced in early versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and was compared to Netscape's blink element, as a proprietary non-standard extension to the HTML standard with usability problems. It is deprecated by the W3C and not advised by them for use in any HTML documents.
posted by profwhat at 7:54 PM on November 6, 2008

Your question title is about reading "gooder." If you're interested in reading text with this thing, you might want to look at "Rapid Serial Visual Presentation" (RSVP). Wikipedia has a pretty good description of the technique. Here's a firefox extension that does it: RSVP Reader. There's apparently a mac program called AceReader too.

This is *way* better than reading a ticker.

But maybe you want to do something else (i.e., other than read text in a space constrained presentation).
posted by zpousman at 7:55 PM on November 6, 2008

Messing about with Quartz Composer is another way to get what you describe. (It's a sort of graphical connect-the-blocks programming environment that comes free with the developer tools.) It would be handy if you're trying to make a scrolling display with spiffy graphic effects; not as useful for RSVP style text.
posted by hattifattener at 1:14 AM on November 7, 2008

Response by poster: zpousman, I tried iReadfast, which I believe is similar to what you suggest but as a standalone app, and I found that it wasn't very good for the stuff I read, as there was no context.

grumblebee, thank you! That's exactly what I wanted!
posted by djgh at 4:15 AM on November 7, 2008

Glad I could help.
posted by grumblebee at 4:20 AM on November 7, 2008