What an amazing year 2012 was. We published TX Text Control X8 which was our largest ever release in terms of features and functionality. We also released TX Spell .NET 3.0 which is now the best selling spell checking component at our largest reseller ComponentSource and we presented our game-changing reporting approach as part of the MailMerge component. Just to mention a few of the innovations.

It is still too early to publish the final roadmap for 2013. But things are approaching fast and I thought to share some upcoming key features, products and technologies.

All About Touch - Touch Enabled Interfaces

With the release of Windows 8, applications should aim to leverage this new input method sooner rather than later. Touch support is not only interesting for pure WinRT apps, but for powerful Windows Forms and WPF desktop applications as well.

Windows 8 Pro tablets can be the next big thing for business applications. The major advantage of these tablet PCs over iPads and Android portable devices is the operating system. The majority of business applications are written for Microsoft Windows. Soon all of these applications will be able to run on Windows 8 Pro tablets.

In order to add touch support, all you need to do is to update your used TX Text Control version in order to handle the supported touch events. Provide your users a hassle-free mobile strategy without changing the whole application. In 2013, we will support you with touch-ready, well-tested components.

Barcode Components: Integrate Barcodes into Your Documents

Invoice data, payment transfer information or address details are printed on invoices encoded in various barcode types. This helps with extracting the included information in a very easy and error-free way.

In 2013, we will publish TX Barcode .NET that enables developers to integrate barcodes into .NET-based applications. TX Barcode .NET creates barcodes efficiently and accurately and can be completely integrated into TX Text Control .NET. You can create WYSIWYG templates with pre-defined barcode placeholders at fixed positions in order to merge them with actual data during the mail merge process.

MailMerge: Performance, Chart and Barcode Integration

The barcodes will be fully integrated into the MailMerge component. All contained barcode placeholders in a template are evaluated and merged with associated data. These barcodes can be part of repeating blocks or nested blocks as well.

The same approach will be integrated for the supported 2D and 3D charts. This enables users to create their reporting templates with pre-defined placeholders of charts and barcodes at the proper location in their actual size and style.

Additionally, we will improve the performance of merging large documents with longer repeating blocks and tables.

New TX Text Control Core Features

The TX Text Control development team is working on many improvements and new features. Here are just a few - others are still classified:

• Reset page numbers section-based
• New Total Number of Pages field, also section-based
• Page number dialog
• Even/Odd headers and footers
• Updated Page Setup dialog

We are really looking forward to a fantastic year 2013. As in the previous 20 years, we will make all efforts to deliver best-of-breed word processing components, innovations and outstanding technical support.