InputPosition, TextChars and Selection: Various Ways to Manipulate Text and the Input Position
TX Text Control provides many ways to set the input position, to manipulate text, and to retrieve text at the current input position. This article gives an overview of various API members and their typical applications.
Text can be manipulated in many ways using the TX Text Control API. Depending on the current task, various classes can be used to set the input position, to retrieve the text or to set the text at the current input position.
The Basics: The Input Position
The following two properties can be used to manipulate the input position:
-
Selection class
-
Input
Position class
Both classes can be use to set the input position to a specific character index which is 0-based.
Selection Class
The following code uses the Selection class to set the input position to the index location 3 which is the beginning of character location 4.
textControl1.Selection.Start = 3;The Selection class can be now used to select a range of text in order to replace it with new text.
textControl1.Selection.Start = 3;
textControl1.Selection.Length = 4;
textControl1.Selection.Text = "New Text";
Although the above code works, the Selection class should be used in a different way. The Selection property accepts a complete Selection object. The object can be prepared and then applied to the text as shown in the code snippet below.
textControl1.Text = "TX Text Control";
TXTextControl.Selection selection = new TXTextControl.Selection(3, 4) {
Text = "New Text"
};
textControl1.Selection = selection;InputPosition Class
The Input
public InputPosition(int page, int line, int column);
public InputPosition(int textPosition);
public InputPosition(int textPosition, TextFieldPosition textFieldPosition);
public InputPosition(Point location);To set the input position to index 3 similar to the above sample using the Selection property, the following code is required.
textControl1.InputPosition = new TXTextControl.InputPosition(3);Retrieving Text
In order to retrieve text from a specific range of text, the Selection class must be used. The following code shows how to retrieve the string "Text" from the above sample.
textControl1.Text = "TX Text Control";
TXTextControl.Selection selection = new TXTextControl.Selection(3, 4);
textControl1.Selection = selection;
var selectedText = selection.Text;To get the formatted text in any supported format, the Selection.
string htmlString;
textControl1.Text = "TX Text Control";
TXTextControl.Selection selection = new TXTextControl.Selection(3, 4);
textControl1.Selection = selection;
selection.Save(out htmlString, TXTextControl.StringStreamType.HTMLFormat);The variable htmlString contains the word "Text" in HTML format.
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta content="TX31_HTM 31.0.1101.500" name="GENERATOR" />
<title></title>
</head>
<body style="font-family:'Arial';font-size:12pt;text-align:left;">
<p lang="en-US" style="text-indent:0pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;font-size:10pt;">Text</p>
</body>
</html>Retrieving Text without Selecting Text
Using the above methods the text must be selected to retrieve the text. The Text
var charAtInputPos = textControl1.TextChars[4].Char;The Line class can be used to retrieve text from a specific line. The following code returns the complete text of the first line.
var lineText = textControl1.Lines[1].Text;The third option to retrieve text without selecting text is the usage of the Paragraph class that represents a complete paragraph including text and formatting. The following code returns the plain text of the complete paragraph based on input position 3.
var parText = textControl1.Paragraphs.GetItem(3).Text;Also See
This post references the following in the documentation:
- TXText
Control. Input Position Class - TXText
Control. Selection Class - TXText
Control. Text Char Class
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