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10-03-16, 11:19 PM   #3
Phanx
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 5,617
Also, the TEXT() function is legacy code from the very earliest iterations of the Blizzard UI; you should never use it in an addon. It literally just returns the string you pass to it:

Code:
    function TEXT(text)
      return text;
    end
Just write the string you want to use.

As to the actual question:

SetText and SetFormattedText are methods that exist on font string objects -- not string values. "Font string" is a type of widget in the WoW UI API, like "texture", "frame", or "button". "String" is a type of value in the Lua programming language, like "number", "boolean", or "table".

If you want to display text, you either need to create a font string (which in turn needs to be attached to a frame):

lua Code:
  1. local frame = CreateFrame("Frame", "LazareQuestFrame", UIParent)
  2. frame:SetSize(100, 100)
  3. frame:SetPoint("CENTER")
  4.  
  5. local fontstring = frame:CreateFontString(nil, "OVERLAY", "GameFontNormal")
  6. fontstring:SetPoint("CENTER")

... or find the name of, or a reference to, a font string that already exists in the UI. Then you can tell it what text to display:

Lua Code:
  1. fontstring:SetText("Track")

SetFormattedText is a "shortcut" to calling string.format and SetText; these do the same thing:

Lua Code:
  1. fontstring:SetText(string.format("You have %d cats.", 42))
  2. fontstring:SetFormattedText("You have %d cats.", 42)

The difference is that SetFormattedText shifts the string.format operation over into C code, where it's (presumably) faster than running it in Lua. Unless you're doing it a million times in a row, though, you'll never notice the difference, so the main reason to use SetFormattedText is that it makes your code less verbose and more readable.

Edit:
After re-reading your post I noticed that you mentioned you think the TRACK_QUEST_ABBREV variable is referring a button. That is not correct -- the Blizzard UI code defines TRACK_QUEST_ABBREV as containing the string "Track". If you overwrote that value with a pointer to a button object, that's even worse -- not only does your code still not work, but you're also breaking any part of the default UI and other addons that expect TRACK_QUEST_ABBREV to be a string.

Please post the rest of your code.
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Last edited by Phanx : 10-03-16 at 11:25 PM.
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