What's New in TX Text Control 17.0

Tables received the most attention in TX Text Control 17.0: cells can be merged, split and named, whole columns selected and each cell border colored. Beyond tables, the version added page borders, PDF documents signed with a certificate and a connection to the new TX Spell .NET.

Version 17.0 was released in November 2011, together with TX Spell .NET 2.0, then a new product, as the press release Press Release: TX Text Control 17.0 and TX Spell .NET 2.0 Released announced. Features of the Windows Forms and WPF controls, such as the new look of selections, the spell checking dialog box and the context menu for misspelled words, aren't listed here.

Version 17.0 at a Glance

Tables

• Columns and cell ranges. Selections can span table columns and rectangular ranges of cells. TableColumn.Select selects a column in code; the new TableColumn class also gives the column's Width, Position and CellFormat, and Table.Columns returns the columns of a table.
• Merged cells. Table.MergeCells merges the selected cells into one cell with their width and content, and Table.SplitCells splits merged cells again. Cells can only be merged when more than one cell of a single table is selected; Table.CanMergeCells and Table.CanSplitCells tell whether it is possible.
• Named cells. TableCell.Name stores any string with a cell. The name is saved only in the TX Text Control format.
• Colored cell borders. Each border of a cell can have its own color, set with LeftBorderColor, TopBorderColor, RightBorderColor and BottomBorderColor of TableCellFormat. All text filters and the TX Text Control format keep the colors.

Tables shows how to work with tables in the current version.

Page Borders

The pages of a section can have a border. SectionFormat.PageBorder takes a PageBorder object that defines the top, left, right and bottom line, each with its own width, color and distance. The distance is measured from the edge of the page or, with MeasureFromText, from the text. SurroundHeader and SurroundFooter include the header and the footer, and FirstPageOnly and OmitFirstPage limit the border to the first page or leave it out there. See Sections.

Digital Signatures

PDF and PDF/A documents can be signed with an X.509 certificate, which, according to the press release, can come from a PFX, DER or Base64 CER file, from raw data or from the local certificate store. SaveSettings.DigitalSignature takes a DigitalSignature object, which holds the certificate and the other data needed to sign the file when it is saved. Digital Signatures covers signing in the current version.

Spell Checking and HTML

• TX Spell .NET. ServerTextControl.SpellChecker connects the TX Spell .NET component, which finds and corrects misspelled words and handles the SpellCheckText event internally. It is activated with IsSpellCheckingEnabled. See Spell Checking and Hyphenation.
• HTML import. The HTML import filter parses documents with the rules of the W3C specification of HTML5.

Upgrade to Version 17.0

Version 17.0 has no update notes.

New Classes, Properties, Methods and Events

The classes and members below are the ones that the What's New documentation of version 17.0 lists for TX Text Control .NET Server. Names are relative to the TXTextControl namespace, each name links to its current reference page, and "(obsolete)" marks a member that is obsolete today. The version's own list names Table and TableCellFormat as new classes, but both existed before: Table.Select dates from version 10.1, and TableRow.CellFormat returned a TableCellFormat in version 12.0, so neither is listed under New Classes.

New Classes

• DigitalSignature
• PageBorder
• TableCellCollection
• TableColumn

Members by Class

Next Steps

• Version 18.0: the features of the next version.
• Version 16.0: table headers, the spell checker interface and text parts.
• Tables: create and format tables.