TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms

Editions and Feature Availability

Topic

TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms comes in three editions: Enterprise, Professional and the free Express edition. They share the editor and its programming interface and differ in the features and file formats they include, so the edition you license decides which pages of this documentation apply to your application. Compare them below before you choose one, or when a feature does not behave as described.

The Editions

EditionFor
EnterpriseCommercial applications that need the complete feature set, including PDF/A, PDF/UA, form fields, footnotes, tables of contents and XML
ProfessionalCommercial applications with Word formats, PDF, mail merge and reporting, the ribbon and track changes
ExpressPrivate and non-commercial applications that need a rich text editor. Free of charge.
TrialEvaluating the fully featured product for 30 days before you buy it
  • Enterprise and Professional are installed with the same setup file, and the NuGet package TXTextControl.TextControl.WinForms.SDK is also the same for both. Choose the Setup names the setup files of all editions.
  • Express and the trial version come with terms of their own: Express for private and non-commercial use only, the trial for evaluation and testing only. Trial Version and Express Edition explains what each allows.

Features by Edition

The following features differ between the editions, as listed in Text Control's feature comparison for version 34.0:

FeatureEnterpriseProfessionalExpress
Headers and footers, document sections, page columnsYesYesNo
Text frames, drawings and shapesYesYesNo
Hypertext linksYesYesNo
1D and 2D barcodesYesYesNo
Comments and track changesYesYesNo
Document protectionYesYesNo
Excel formulas in tablesYesYesNo
Merge fields, reporting and mail merge, Data Source ManagerYesYesNo
Ribbon controlYesYesNo
Page rendering engineYesYesNo
FootnotesYesNoNo
Form fieldsYesNoNo
Table of contentsYesNoNo
Stylesheet programmingYesNoNo
XML programmingYesNoNo
Stylesheet formattingYesPartlyPartly

All three editions include the core of the editor:

  • Character and paragraph formatting, bullets and numbered lists, tables and table headers, and images
  • Page and document settings, zooming, and printing with print preview
  • Clipboard operations, search and replace, and multi-level undo and redo
  • The built-in dialog boxes and the toolbars
  • Marked text fields, data binding, and loading from and saving to databases
  • Unicode, multi-language support and a 64-bit version

Spell checking is marked as partly supported in all three editions. The spelling features of the editor work with TX Spell .NET, a separate product, through the SpellChecker property of TextControl.

File Formats by Edition

FormatEnterpriseProfessionalExpress
RTF and HTMLYesYesYes
DOCX and DOCYesYesNo
XLSXYesYesNo
PDF export and importYesYesNo
PDF/A (PDF/A-3a and PDF/A-3b)YesNoNo
PDF/UA (accessible PDF)YesNoNo
XML, DTD and CSSYesNoNo
MarkdownYesNoNo

Supported File Formats lists every format with the values you pass to Load and Save.

Check the Edition at Run Time

TextControl.GetVersionInfo returns a VersionInfo object, and its Level property tells you which edition is installed. The reference documents this property as ProductLevel, the name of its type, but in code it is Level:

using TXTextControl;

// Show the installed edition, for example "Enterprise"
VersionInfo versionInfo = textControl1.GetVersionInfo();
MessageBox.Show(versionInfo.Level.ToString());

The property returns a value of VersionInfo.ProductLevel: Enterprise, Professional or Trial, or Standard for the Express edition.