2022 has been a remarkable year for us here at Text Control. Based on the growing demand for digital document processing technologies, we were able to help many users implementing document sharing, document workflow automation, document collaboration and document signing functionality into their business applications.
Together with our users, in countless screen sharing sessions, phone calls, in-person meetings and at our conference expo booth, we discussed and planned new features and requirements for Text Control products. Your feedback is the driving force for our product roadmaps and technologies.
We have a clear company vision and agenda with a customer-centric focus:
"Developing the best developer libraries to integrate digital document processing into business applications."
Current Trends: E-Signature, Forms, PDFs
In all of these discussions, we saw some trends in 2022 for typical applications for digital document processing components.
Electronic Signatures
We added all required parts of a document signature technology platform to TX Text Control to provide a complete set of tools that helps to integrate electronic signature processes into business applications. Using TX Text Control, you can add the complete workflow into your business applications without the dependency on third-party vendors or services. As opposed to other electronic signature service vendors, the documents stay in your environment and will not be uploaded to third-party servers to collect the signatures.
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Electronic and digital signatures implemented through TX Text Control provide significant advantages over other concepts. This article gives an overview of advantages and differences of TX Text Control.
Forms Processing
TX Text Control offers a unique way to create documents with fillable form elements such as form text boxes, check box fields and drop-down elements. These forms can be created like mail merge templates and dynamically pre-completed with values form data sources.
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Form fields and merge fields can be combined to prepare document forms for end-users. Flattened and editable form fields and merge fields can be used to merge in static data that cannot be changed by the end-user.
Besides the option to create forms programmatically, form field elements can be added using the out-of-the-box, customizable ribbon UI. Using conditional instructions, it is possible to add dependencies between fields based on logical operators. This allows to add a complete workflow to forms by adding dependencies between form fields.
Using TX Text Control, forms can be deployed in many ways such as in form of an Adobe PDF document that can be completed in Acrobat Reader, using the DocumentEditor and the DocumentViewer that is compatible to the form fields created by the document editor (or MS Word) including conditional instructions.
PDF Generation
TX Text Control allows developers to create PDF files programmatically using C# in various ways:
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Creating PDFs from Scratch
TX Text Control can be used to create all supported document types with the same streamlined API . After creating a new instance of ServerTextControl , content such as text, tables and images can be added programmatically. -
Creating PDFs from MS Word Templates
Another method to create PDF documents is to use MS Word templates such as Office Open XML (*.docx) files in order to merge data into merge fields. -
Converting Documents
You can also create PDF documents by converting them from other formats such as HTML or Markdown.
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TX Text Control .NET allows developers to create PDF files programmatically using C# in various ways including creating documents from scratch, merging data into pre-defined templates and by converting documents such as HTML to PDF.
Conferences: In Full Swing
In-person conferences are completely back and in full swing. We never stopped supporting conferences and specifically in-person conferences around the globe. Wherever possible, we exhibited and sponsored developer conferences in the United States, Norway, United Kingdom and Germany.
This year, attendee numbers are back to normal and exceeded pre-Covid numbers. That shows that in-person meetings are important for developers to meet other enthusiastic peers to share, connect and learn.
We exhibited at 10 conferences in 2022 in-person and we are fully committed to our developer community. You can see impressions and read summaries of all conferences we visited in our blog:
https://www.textcontrol.com/blog/tag/conference/2022/
Releases: .NET 6 and 7 Support
In September 2022, we released new versions of TX Text Control (31.0) and TX Spell with focus on signature fields and .NET 6 and 7 support. Version 31.0 for ASP.NET, Windows Forms and WPF fully supports .NET 5, 6 and 7 including support for the following features:
- NuGet packages
- Visual Studio design-time support (Windows Forms)
- .NET 5, 6 and 7 compatible licensing
- Easy (integrated) deployment
Many software companies invested heavily into Windows Forms (and WPF) over decades and need to maximize the return on investment including the time on learning the Windows Forms programming model, the development time and the investments into third-party components such as TX Text Control.
Notwithstanding, typically new projects are based on other platforms including ASP.NET Core, Angular and Blazor and based on the number of downloads, sales numbers and the technical support volume, we also see the highest growth in these technologies. But for us, it is very important to support our community by providing updates and full commitment for existing technologies.
New US Headquarters
In the middle of the pandemic, we started the process of planning a new headquarters for Text Control in the United States. There were many reasons and factors for that move, but the main driving problem was lack of space. To keep up with our growth, we had to look into new opportunities.
We are very excited about our new US headquarters in Charlotte, NC. After months of planning with architects, designers and technicians, we finally moved into new premises. With key factors such as technology, creativity and flexibility in mind, together with our architects, technology specialists and the construction company, we designed an office space tailored to our exact requirements.
With focus on collaboration, communication and team work, we were able to design a high-performance office that combines the best aspects of both, using digital and physical infrastructure to make it a place of co-creation and collaboration.
More Pictures
In the middle of the pandemic, we started the process of planning a new headquarters for Text Control in the United States. This article provides some insights into our office strategy and how we think a modern workplace should look like.
2023 Outlook
We always develop new ideas for products and innovations together with you - our users. Our list for 2023 is packed with new features and technologies and we will publish a detailed roadmap early next year.
As a modern software company we are used to changes, new technologies and new platforms. Going forward, we are continuing this successful path and will enter new markets by enabling technologies for our users and by exploring trends.
One of our 6 company values is Sustained Growth with one constraint: 100% self-owned and no investors. In our industry, specifically in 2022, many companies got acquired by VC backed growth companies. We are convinced that this has negative effects for users. We focus on technology and on customer needs.
And we are hiring! We are looking for talented developers who are passionate about their work - people who would complement our existing team. See our open positions to learn more about our work opportunities.
Happy Holidays
If you want to talk about your document processing requirements and our future roadmap, simply contact us. Our engineers would be very happy to help you.
The Text Control team wishes all of our customers, partners and friends Happy Holidays and a healthy and prosperous 2023.
Happy coding!
