TX Text Control Blog

Philly Code Camp 2013.1 recap

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 12, 2013 and tagged with conference.

It was a rainy Saturday in Philadelphia this weekend, but a perfect day to learn from experienced speakers at the Philly Code Camp 2013. 550 attendees spent their day at the facilities of the beautiful Penn State University in Abington, PA.

This was our 7th Philly Code Camp as a sponsor and exhibitor and we are very proud to support this fantastic .NET community. We have many customers in the greater Philadelphia area and it is always a pleasure to meet them at the code camps and dedicated meetings in the following days.

We continued our reporting tour presenting the flow type layout reporting capabilities of TX Text Control X9 and our latest barcode component. We really enjoyed speaking with all users, interested developers and friends. Find below some impressions of our table area at the Philly Code Camp 2013.1:

Text Control @ dotnet Cologne 2013Text Control @ dotnet Cologne 2013Text Control @ dotnet Cologne 2013Text Control @ dotnet Cologne 2013Text Control @ dotnet Cologne 2013Text Control @ dotnet Cologne 2013

Understanding the UpperTextLength of barcodes in TX Text Control X9

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 9, 2013 and tagged with tutorial.

One of the major improvements in TX Text Control X9 is the integrated support for barcodes of type TX Barcode .NET. This barcode component, available for Windows Forms and WPF, enables developers to integrate barcodes into .NET based applications. In today's processes, barcodes are included everywhere: Invoices, delivery notes or admission tickets. Barcodes are used to store digital data on paper that can be acquired easily for further processing using laser-based scanners, cameras or mobile phones.

In order to insert a barcode, an object of type BarcodeFrame and the associated TXBarcodeControl object is required. The BarcodeFrame acts like a container for barcodes in TX Text Control and can be added to the collection of barcodes.

The following code shows how to create these two objects and how to insert them into the current document:

TXTextControl.Barcode.TXBarcodeControl txBarcode1 = new TXTextControl.Barcode.TXBarcodeControl(); txBarcode1.BarcodeType = TXTextControl.Barcode.BarcodeType.QRCode; txBarcode1.UpperTextLength = 19; txBarcode1.Text = "www.textcontrol.com"; TXTextControl.DataVisualization.BarcodeFrame bf = new TXTextControl.DataVisualization.BarcodeFrame(txBarcode1); textControl1.Barcodes.Add(bf, -1);

The barcode is inserted at the current input position in it's default size:

TX Barcode .NET in TX Text Control

Understanding the UpperTextLength property

TX Barcode .NET has been designed for word processing purposes. For reporting and other word processing requirements, it is essential that the barcode object doesn't displace other objects or text in the document. Therefore, the size must be fixed and the inner content should be resized instead.

This can be controlled using the UpperTextLength property of TX Barcode .NET. This property defines the maximum number of characters. If the maximum number of characters is encrypted, it fills the complete space of the object.

If less charactes are encrypted, the barcode size doesn't change, but the content is getting smaller. In the above sample, the UpperTextLength property is set to a number of 19 and the encrypted text has exactly 19 characters. The following screenshot shows what happens, if the encryted text is shorter than 19 characters:

TX Barcode .NET in TX Text Control

But what if the barcode object size gets changed?

TX Barcode .NET in TX Text Control

The barcode content is scaled proportionally based on the object size and the UpperTextLength.

Consider a typical scenario: A barcode should be added for each item line in a product list. The barcode encrypts the article code of each product in that list. In this case, the article code length stays constant and in most cases, you know the length of the article codes in advance. Then you can set the UpperTextLength property of the barcode to the length of the article codes and the barcode size stays constant.

In case the barcode text length is variable, and you would like to use the AutoSize functionality of TX Barcode .NET, you should set the UpperTextLength property for each instance to the length of the encrypted text before setting the text. This ensures that the barcode content fills the container completely.

string sText = "Flow Type Layout Reporting"; txBarcode1.UpperTextLength = sText.Length; txBarcode1.Text = sText;

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Special Offer: Renew your expired Subscriptions

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 8, 2013 and tagged with release.

Special Offer: Renew your expired Subscriptions

TX Text Control X9 has been recently released with many new features and improvements.

Limited until the end of May 2013, you can renew all expired Subscriptions for our significantly cheaper post-renewal pricing, which gives you immediate access to version X9. Usually, a full update would be required.

Your advantages are:

  • Post-renewal pricing for all licenses
  • Access to version X9 and all upcoming versions for the next 12 months
  • Access to technical support (e-mail, telephone, chat, forum)

All you need to do is to call us:

United States: +1 704 544 7445

Europe: +49 421 427067 10

Or send us a message.

This offer is only available through the offices of Text Control and not with resellers.

Flow Type Layout Reporting Tour - Meet us in Philadelphia

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 5, 2013 and tagged with conference.

Philly Code Camp

Our reporting tour continues and we will pitch our tent in Philadelphia this weekend. 700 attendees are expected at the Philly Code Camp 2013.1 to learn in more than 60 sessions. We have been supporting this community event for many years as a sponsor and exhibitor.

This year, this is the last stop of our spring Flow Type Layout Reporting Tour and we are presenting the new reporting capabilities of TX Text Control X9.

If you are already registered, stop by our table and learn more about TX Text Control X9. If you are not registered, you can try to get a ticket through the waitlist. The event is sold out.

See you in Philadelphia!

Text Control @ Carolina Code Camp 2013

Blogged by Björn Meyer on May 4, 2013 and tagged with conference.

We didn't have to travel this week to exhibit at the Carolina Code Camp. It is located in the Text Control US office hometown Charlotte on the beautiful Central Piedmont Community College campus.

400 enthusiastic developers met to learn from experienced speakers and members of the thriving .NET community in the Carolinas. We continued our flow type layout reporting tour and presented how MS Word based reporting should look like nowadays: With a powerful template designer, full MS Word support, high-performance merging procedures and support for illustrations such as barcodes and charts.

Thanks to all attendees who stopped by our table - it was a pleasure talking to you.

Below are some impressions of our booth area:

Text Control @ Carolina Code Camp 2013Text Control @ Carolina Code Camp 2013Text Control @ Carolina Code Camp 2013Text Control @ Carolina Code Camp 2013Text Control @ Carolina Code Camp 2013Text Control @ Carolina Code Camp 2013

Next weekend, you can see us in Philadelphia at the Philly Code Camp 2013.

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