I often need to mock up search results on a list. It’s important for our flow that I show the parts of the string that matched.
For example I search for ord
The results should show:
Order
Coordinate
Password
I want to use symbols for these results, so I can later update iconography, alignment, etc. But I am not able to because symbols don’t support substring text formatting.
The way I handle this (which is admittedly a hassle, but I can’t see any other way), is that in a symbol I’ll create a group with horizontal SmartLayout turned on. Then that group will have 3 separate text layers next to each other.
When you view the symbol instance you can now decide which text layers to make bold (first, middle or last).
Ah yes, I’ve done that before. Ended up being a hassle. Also, for my purpose I had the need to sometimes make the text dimmer, italic, or bold, and to have random ranges.
But you’re right, for the case I described, your idea would work!
Another case that doesn’t work is to show fuzzy matching.
If I search for FCP I would get a result for Final Cut Pro.
So the arbitrary nature of the results makes it really tricky to do with a symbol without some major gymnastics.
I’d like to throw my hat in the ring for this! I many times have to create another symbol (or detach it) just because I want to bold a word (think of the help text example).
