TX Text Control ActiveX

ASP and VBScript

Topic

On a web server, TX Text Control ActiveX creates, converts and prints documents from Active Server Pages (ASP) in Microsoft Internet Information Server. Read on for how a TXTextControl works in VBScript on the server, from the prerequisites to a complete online store.

What Server Mode Is

On a server, TX Text Control switches to a special mode without a user interface: no editing window, no toolbars and no ruler. It displays no dialog boxes and no error messages. The user never sees it, and all editing and processing happens in code.

An editor that is hidden from the user may seem strange at first, but many applications process documents in code rather than interactively.

What You Can Do on a Server

  • Assemble documents from different sources: text files (ASCII, RTF, HTML, DOC, XML) and image files (BMP, TIFF, WMF, JPEG, PNG, GIF).
  • Fill in information from a database, for example to generate invoices and order confirmations automatically, as the Online Store sample program does.
  • Convert documents to RTF, HTML, DOC or PDF, then save them to a file or a database, or send them by email or HTTP.
  • Convert XML data to HTML and other formats on the fly. You store documents in a single format and convert them when users request them.
  • Process and print in batches large volumes of documents.
  • Apply every word processing function in code that a menu item or dialog box offers, such as find and replace, fonts, paragraph indents and alignment, and inserting tables and images. Code selects text the way a user selects it with the mouse, for example to underline it or change its text color.

How Users Reach the Server

Client applications offer a word processor interface. Server-based programs often communicate with the user over HTTP instead: the user enters information on a web page, the server processes it and sends back a result, for example a PDF file with an invoice. Some applications have no user interface at all, such as batch processing of large numbers of files or batch print jobs.

Where to Start

  1. Check the Prerequisites: Internet Information Server must be installed.
  2. Set up and run the six scripts of Simple Sample Programs.
  3. Study the complete application in Online Store: an Advanced ASP Example.

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