What's New in TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms 18.0
Charts entered TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms documents in version 18.0, with a layout dialog box and events of their own. Together with a z-order for all objects and transparent text frames, the version let images, text frames and charts lie above or below the text and each other, and the status bar got a new design with a zoom track bar.
Version 18.0 was released in August 2012 as TX Text Control X8, as the press release Press Release: TX Text Control X8 (18.0) Released announced. The context menu for misspelled words of the WPF control is part of TX Text Control .NET for WPF and isn't listed here.
Version 18.0 at a Glance
| Area | What is new |
|---|---|
| Charts | Chart controls in the text, positioned like images, with a layout dialog box |
| Z-order | Images, text frames and charts above or below the text, and in front of or behind each other |
| Text frames | Transparency |
| Frames | One collection of all images, text frames and charts |
| Status bar | A color gradient, separator lines and a zoom track bar |
| Spell checking | Ignored and duplicate words |
| Images | The EMF format, without an image filter |
Charts
A document can contain chart controls of the type System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization.Charting.Chart, which is part of the .NET Framework from version 4 on and can be added to earlier versions.
- Position. A DataVisualization.ChartFrame places the chart like an image or a text frame: as a character in the text, anchored to a paragraph or relative to the document. The frame is connected to a chart control through Chart, which holds the appearance and the data.
- Collection. TextControl.Charts returns a DataVisualization.ChartCollection, which adds and removes charts.
ServerTextControlhas the same property. - Layout dialog box. TextControl.ChartLayoutDialog opens a dialog box for the position, the size and the distances to the text.
- Events.
TextControlreports charts that are created, deleted, moved, sized and clicked, for example with ChartCreated, ChartMoved and ChartDoubleClicked. - Formats. The TX Text Control format and RTF save a chart as a chart, which is rebuilt when the document is loaded. Other formats save its image. On a system without the chart controls, the image is inserted instead.
Charts and Barcodes shows how charts are used in the current version.
Z-Order and Frames
- Above and below the text. The new insertion modes
AboveTheTextandBelowTheTextput an object in front of the text or behind it. ImageCollection.Add, TextFrameCollection.Add and ChartCollection.Add accept them, as do theInsertionModeproperties of images, text frames and frames. - Change the order. ChangeZOrder moves an image, text frame or chart one plane up or down, or to the top or the bottom. Objects inserted as characters always have the z-order 0.
- Transparent text frames. TextFrame.Transparency takes a value from 0, opaque, to 255, completely transparent, so that objects behind the frame show through.
- All frames. TextControl.Frames returns a FrameCollection with all images, text frames and charts, which changes their common attributes and returns the selected item.
Text Frames and Shapes shows how to work with text frames today.
Status Bar
The StatusBar got a new look: a background with a vertical color gradient and separator lines between its parts. The new style is set with the VerticalColorScheme value of BorderStyle. The colors follow the Windows theme, or you set them with DisplayColors, whose StatusBar.Colors object has properties such as BackColorTop and SeparatorColorDark. ShowZoomTrackBar adds a track bar that sets the zoom factor of the connected TextControl. See Rulers and Status Bar.
More Changes
- Text parts. Two new overloads of TextPartCollection.GetItem return the offset of a text part from the top left corner of the
TextControland the text part at a given location. - Spell checking. MisspelledWord.IsIgnored marks a misspelled word as ignored: it stays in the collection but isn't underlined. MisspelledWord.IsDuplicate tells whether the word repeats the word in front of it. MisspelledWordCollection.Ignore ignores a word, and GetCount counts the words of one kind.
- EMF images. TX Text Control supports the Windows Enhanced Metafile format (EMF). EMF and WMF images are handled internally, so the WMF image filter is no longer needed.
- Initialization. ServerTextControl.IsCreated tells whether a
ServerTextControlhas been created completely.
Upgrade to Version 18.0
- MisspelledWordCollection.GetItem. The location parameter of MisspelledWordCollection.GetItem is given in pixels instead of twips.
- Insertion modes. The enumerations ImageInsertionMode and TextFrameInsertionMode have the new values
AboveTheTextandBelowTheText.
New Classes, Properties, Methods and Events
The classes and members below are the ones that the What's New documentation of version 18.0 lists for TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms. Names are relative to the TXTextControl namespace, each name links to its current reference page, and "(obsolete)" marks a member that is obsolete today.
New Classes
- DataVisualization.ChartCollection
- DataVisualization.ChartEventArgs
- DataVisualization.ChartFrame
- FrameCollection
Members by Class
Next Steps
- Version 19.0: the features of the next version.
- Version 17.0: merged table cells, a new selection look, page borders and digital signatures.
- Rulers and Status Bar: the status bar of the current version.