What's New in TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms 12.0

Text frames and images anchored to a paragraph arrived in TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms 12.0, together with built-in dialog boxes and a mouse interface to move, size and format them. The same version introduced ServerTextControl, the programming interface of the TextControl without a user interface, and gave table rows control over page breaks.

Version 12.0 was released in August 2005 as TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms 12.0, as the blog article TX Text Control 12.0 Released announced. The server product built on ServerTextControl, TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET (incl. Windows Forms) 12.0, followed in November 2005, as the press release Press Release: TX Text Control Server for ASP.NET (incl. Windows Forms) 12.0 is Released announced.

Version 12.0 at a Glance

Text Frames and Anchored Images

• Anchored images. Besides inserting an image as a character or positioning it on a page, an image can be anchored to a paragraph. The text flows around it, its position is relative to the paragraph, and it moves with the text. New overloads of ImageCollection.Add insert such images, and all properties of Image support them.
• Text frames. A TextFrame is a rectangle of text that users edit like the main text and that is positioned like an image: as a character, anchored to a paragraph or relative to a page. TextControl.TextFrames returns a TextFrameCollection, which works like the collection of images.
• The text of a frame. A text frame has its own Selection, Lines, TextChars, Tables, TextFields and Images, so that its text is programmed like the main text. BorderWidth, InternalMargins and BackColor set its border, its margins and its background, and TextControl.TextFrameMarkerLines shows marker lines around frames without a border.
• Events. TextControl reports text frames that are created, deleted, activated, deactivated, moved, sized and clicked, for example with TextFrameCreated and TextFrameActivated, which pass a TextFrameEventArgs object. ImageRightClicked reports a right click on an image.

Text Frames and Shapes and Images show how to work with them today.

Dialog Boxes and Mouse Interface

• Attribute dialog boxes. TextControl.ImageAttributesDialog and TextControl.TextFrameAttributesDialog open built-in dialog boxes for the size, the text wrapping, the scaling and the distances to the text. For images, they also set the file name, format, resolution and compression used when the image is exported; for text frames, the background color and the frame. See Built-in Dialog Boxes.
• Mouse interface. Users move and size images and text frames with the mouse in every insertion mode. A selection frame with sizing handles shows which object is selected.

Tables

Users insert a page break at any position in a table with CTRL+ENTER, which moves the whole table row to the next page. TableRow.AllowPageBreak set to false moves a row to the next page as soon as one of its lines would be there, and TableRow.MinimumHeight sets the height a row has at least; it grows when its text needs more room. The built-in table attributes dialog box sets both. See Tables and Table Formulas.

ServerTextControl

ServerTextControl has the programming interface of the TextControl class without its visual interface, for use in ASP.NET server applications. It loads, changes and saves documents with members such as Create, which has to be called before any other member, Load, Save, Selection and Tables. The version's ASP.NET User's Guide came with many samples. ServerTextControl describes the class as it is today.

Upgrade to Version 12.0

Version 12.0 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 12.0 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. The version's own list also names TableRow as a new class, but TableRow.Select dates from version 10.1, so it isn't listed under New Classes. It further lists TextFrames properties of MainText, FootnoteSection and FootnoteText, classes that the reference dates to versions 16.0 and 32.0; they are left out here.

New Classes

• ServerTextControl
• TextFrame
• TextFrameCollection
• TextFrameEventArgs

Members by Class

Next Steps

• Version 13.0: the features of the next version.
• Version 11.0: nested tables, multiple undo, the resource kit and PDF security.
• Text Frames and Shapes: work with text frames today.