Around a TextControl in a WPF window you place ready-made controls that give users commands and feedback: ribbon tabs for the Microsoft WPF ribbon or a button bar, the mini toolbars that pop up next to the text, horizontal and vertical ruler bars, and a status bar. Each one is introduced below with what it shows, how it is connected to the editor and where the Document Editor section describes it in detail. For how all parts of an application fit together, see Product Architecture.

Ribbon Tabs or a Button Bar

Users get their commands from one of two interfaces:

	Ribbon tabs	ButtonBar
What users see	Tabs of command groups at the top of the window, in a `Ribbon` from Microsoft's `System.Windows.Controls.Ribbon` assembly	One tool bar with character and paragraph formatting
What it covers	The features of the editor, spread over twelve predefined tabs	Styles, font, size, zoom, bold, italic, alignment, indents, lists and more
Editions	Enterprise and Professional	Enterprise, Professional and Standard

The rulers and the status bar work with either one. The ribbon sample of TX Words shows the tabs without a button bar. Editions and Feature Availability lists what each edition includes.

The Ribbon Tabs

TX Text Control .NET for WPF provides ribbon tabs, not a ribbon control. Each predefined tab is derived from System.Windows.Controls.Ribbon.RibbonTab and is hosted in a System.Windows.Controls.Ribbon.Ribbon, Microsoft's ribbon for WPF:

Tab	For
RibbonFormattingTab	Character and paragraph attributes, formatting styles, the clipboard and search
RibbonInsertTab	Pages, tables, images, hyperlinks, bookmarks, headers and footers, text frames and symbols
RibbonPageLayoutTab	Page setup and layout
RibbonViewTab	View settings, and showing and hiding the rulers and the status bar
RibbonReferencesTab	Footnotes and tables of contents
RibbonProofingTab	Spelling, hyphenation, language, comments and tracked changes
RibbonPermissionsTab	What users may change in a protected document
RibbonFormFieldsTab	Inserting and editing form fields
RibbonReportingTab	Mail merge and reporting templates
RibbonTableLayoutTab	Tables
RibbonFormulaTab	Formulas in table cells
RibbonFrameLayoutTab	Images, text frames, drawings and barcodes

The Predefined Tabs lists the groups of each tab.

Connection. A tab controls a TextControl when the editor names it in a string property of the same name, such as RibbonFormattingTab. Connecting Ribbon Tabs in XAML connects all of them in one window.
Items and contextual tabs. Every item of a tab has a name from the tab's RibbonItem enumeration, with which you change, move or remove it, and the table and frame tabs can appear only in their context. See Built-in Ribbon Tabs.
Your own tabs and commands. Tabs of your own, the application menu and the Quick Access Toolbar are built from Microsoft's ribbon classes, and ResourceProvider gives your buttons the icons and texts of the built-in items. See Custom Tabs and Commands.

ButtonBar

The ButtonBar is a System.Windows.Controls.ToolBar that shows and sets the character and paragraph attributes of the connected editor, which names it in its ButtonBar property. Its 24 buttons and combo boxes are items of its Items collection, where you sort, remove or add items in code. The Button Bar lists the items and shows how to change them.

Mini Toolbars

A mini toolbar is a small popup with the formatting commands of the current context: the TextMiniToolbar for text and tables, and the ObjectMiniToolbar for text frames, drawings and barcodes. They need no item in the toolbox: ShowMiniToolbar of the TextControl turns them on. Mini Toolbars describes when each one opens and how you change its items.

RulerBar

A RulerBar shows and sets indents, page margins and tabs. A window usually has two of them, connected through RulerBar and VerticalRulerBar of the editor. Ruler Settings describes the scale, the page margins, the cell references in tables and the border styles.

StatusBar

The StatusBar shows the input position, the page, the section, the language, the key states and the zoom factor, and the editor names it in its StatusBar property. Like RulerBar, it is derived from TextControlToolBar. Status Bar Settings lists the properties that choose its areas and set their labels.

Next Steps

Connect Rulers, Toolbars, and a Status Bar — build an editor with a button bar, rulers and a status bar.
Create a WPF Ribbon Application — put the ribbon tabs into a Ribbon and connect them.
Ribbon and UI — the tabs, mini toolbars, dialog boxes, themes and localization in detail.
Sidebar — the panels that several ribbon buttons open.

Ribbon Tabs, Toolbars, Rulers, and Status Bar