What's New in TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms 13.0
A vertical ruler bar joined the Windows Forms controls in TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms 13.0, and all toolbars followed the color scheme of Windows. The version also let paragraphs control how they flow across pages, exported hypertext links to PDF, pasted HTML from the clipboard and extended the collections of text fields, links and targets.
Version 13.0 was released in October 2006, as the press release Press Release: TX Text Control 13.0 is Released announced.
Version 13.0 at a Glance
| Area | What is new |
|---|---|
| Ruler bars | A vertical ruler bar for page margins, headers and footers and table cells |
| Toolbar design | Button bar, ruler bar and status bar in the Windows color scheme |
| Paragraphs | A new paragraph dialog box, keep with next, keep lines together, page break before, widow and orphan control |
| Hypertext links and targets in exported PDF documents | |
| Clipboard | Pasting HTML-formatted text |
| Fields and links | Visible hypertext targets, collections for fields, links, targets and page number fields |
| Input position | An input position at the start or end of a text field |
Vertical Ruler Bar
A vertical ruler bar lets users set the top and bottom page margins, the position and height of headers and footers and the height of table cells. RulerBar.Alignment switches a RulerBar from horizontal to vertical, and the Dock property of the control sets the direction automatically. TextControl.VerticalRulerBar connects the vertical ruler bar to a TextControl. See Rulers and Status Bar.
Toolbar Design
All toolbars support the color schemes that users select in the Windows settings. The buttons and the background of the button bar are shaded from light to dark, and the ruler bar and the status bar have one background color that depends on the color scheme. The ColorScheme setting of ButtonBar.ButtonStyle, ButtonBar.BorderStyle, RulerBar.BorderStyle and StatusBar.BorderStyle selects the design. See Themes, Colors, and Icons.
Paragraph Flow
A new dialog box for paragraph attributes, opened with TextControl.ParagraphFormatDialog, sets paragraph frames and the options that control how paragraphs are broken across pages. Four new properties of ParagraphFormat set the same options in code: KeepWithNext keeps a paragraph on the page of the next one, KeepLinesTogether keeps its lines together, PageBreakBefore starts it on a new page, and WidowOrphanLines sets the widow and orphan control. See Text and Paragraph Formatting.
Hypertext Links in PDF
When a document is exported as Adobe PDF, its text fields of the types HypertextLink, DocumentLink and DocumentTarget become links and targets of the PDF document. See PDF Creation and Conversion.
Clipboard
The TextControl pastes text in HTML format from the clipboard. See Clipboard Operations.
Fields, Links and Targets
- Visible targets. TextControl.DocumentTargetMarkers shows hypertext targets in the text.
- Collections. Text fields, hypertext links, document links, document targets and page number fields are managed through TextFieldCollection, HypertextLinkCollection, DocumentLinkCollection, DocumentTargetCollection and the new PageNumberFieldCollection. The member list of the version names their
Add,Clear,CopyToandRemovemethods and, except for page number fields,GetItem. See Fields, Hyperlinks, and Bookmarks. - Input position in a text field. A new InputPosition constructor places the input position exactly at the beginning or at the end of a
TextFieldor a class derived from it. - Text frames. TextFrame.Activate gives a text frame the input focus, TextFrameCollection.DeactivateItem returns the focus to the text part that contains the frame, and TextFrame.Find searches the text of a frame.
Upgrade to Version 13.0
- AutoSize renamed. The
TextControlpropertyAutoSizewas renamed to AutoControlSize, because the base classSystem.Windows.Forms.Controlgot anAutoSizeproperty of another type. - Remove with keepText. The
Removemethods of TextFieldCollection, HypertextLinkCollection and DocumentLinkCollection have a newkeepTextparameter that keeps the text of the removed field or link in the document.
New Classes, Properties, Methods and Events
The classes and members below are the ones that the What's New documentation of version 13.0 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 TextFieldCollection, HypertextLinkCollection, DocumentLinkCollection and DocumentTargetCollection as new classes, but ServerTextControl returned all four in version 12.0, and the update notes of 13.0 change the Remove method of three of them. It names RulerBar as a new class too, which version 11.0 had already redesigned. None of these is listed under New Classes.
New Classes
Members by Class
Next Steps
- Version 14.0: the features of the next version.
- Version 12.0:
ServerTextControl, text frames, anchored images and attribute dialog boxes. - Rulers and Status Bar: the ruler bars of the current version.