\section{wxRichTextCtrl overview}\label{wxrichtextctrloverview}
-Classes: \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl}{wxrichtextctrl}, \helpref{wxRichTextBuffer}{wxrichtextbuffer},
-\helpref{wxRichTextAttr}{wxrichtextattr}, \helpref{wxTextAttrEx}{wxtextattrex},
-\helpref{wxRichTextCharacterStyleDefinition}{wxrichtextcharacterstyledefinition},
+{\bf Major classes:} \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl}{wxrichtextctrl}, \helpref{wxRichTextBuffer}{wxrichtextbuffer}, \helpref{wxRichTextEvent}{wxrichtextevent}
+
+{\bf Helper classes:} \helpref{wxRichTextAttr}{wxrichtextattr}, \helpref{wxTextAttrEx}{wxtextattrex},
+\helpref{wxRichTextRange}{wxrichtextrange}
+
+{\bf File handler classes:} \helpref{wxRichTextFileHandler}{wxrichtextfilehandler}, \helpref{wxRichTextHTMLHandler}{wxrichtexthtmlhandler},
+\helpref{wxRichTextXMLHandler}{wxrichtextxmlhandler}
+
+{\bf Style classes:} \helpref{wxRichTextCharacterStyleDefinition}{wxrichtextcharacterstyledefinition},
\helpref{wxRichTextParagraphStyleDefinition}{wxrichtextparagraphstyledefinition},
-\helpref{wxRichTextStyleSheet}{wxrichtextstylesheet},
-\helpref{wxRichTextStyleComboCtrl}{wxrichtextstylecomboctrl},
+\helpref{wxRichTextListStyleDefinition}{wxrichtextliststyledefinition},
+\helpref{wxRichTextStyleSheet}{wxrichtextstylesheet}
+
+{\bf Additional controls:} \helpref{wxRichTextStyleComboCtrl}{wxrichtextstylecomboctrl},
\helpref{wxRichTextStyleListBox}{wxrichtextstylelistbox},
-\helpref{wxRichTextEvent}{wxrichtextevent}, \helpref{wxRichTextRange}{wxrichtextrange},
-\helpref{wxRichTextFileHandler}{wxrichtextfilehandler}, \helpref{wxRichTextHTMLHandler}{wxrichtexthtmlhandler},
-\helpref{wxRichTextXMLHandler}{wxrichtextxmlhandler},
+\helpref{wxRichTextStyleListCtrl}{wxrichtextstylelistctrl}
+
+{\bf Printing classes:} \helpref{wxRichTextPrinting}{wxrichtextprinting},
+\helpref{wxRichTextPrintout}{wxrichtextprintout},
+\helpref{wxRichTextHeaderFooterData}{wxrichtextheaderfooterdata}
+
+{\bf Dialog classes:} \helpref{wxRichTextStyleOrganiserDialog}{wxrichtextstyleorganiserdialog},
\helpref{wxRichTextFormattingDialog}{wxrichtextformattingdialog},
\helpref{wxSymbolPickerDialog}{wxsymbolpickerdialog}
wxRichTextCtrl provides a generic implementation of a rich text editor that can handle different character
-styles, paragraph formatting, and images. It's aimed at editing 'natural' language text - if you need an editor that supports code editing,
-wxStyledTextCtrl is a better choice.
+styles, paragraph formatting, and images. It's aimed at editing 'natural' language text - if you need an editor
+that supports code editing, wxStyledTextCtrl is a better choice.
Despite its name, it cannot currently read or write RTF (rich text format) files. Instead, it
uses its own XML format, and can also read and write plain text. In future we expect to provide
available in wxRichTextCtrl. Since it's written in pure wxWidgets, any customizations
you make to wxRichTextCtrl will be reflected on all platforms.
-There are of course a few disadvantages to using wxRichTextCtrl. It is not native,
+wxRichTextCtrl supports basic printing via the easy-to-use \helpref{wxRichTextPrinting}{wxrichtextprinting} class.
+Creating applications with simple word processing features is simplified with the inclusion of\rtfsp
+\helpref{wxRichTextFormattingDialog}{wxrichtextformattingdialog}, a tabbed dialog allowing
+interactive tailoring of paragraph and character styling. Also provided is the multi-purpose dialog\rtfsp
+\helpref{wxRichTextStyleOrganiserDialog}{wxrichtextstyleorganiserdialog} that can be used for
+managing style definitions, browsing styles and applying them, or selecting list styles with
+a renumber option.
+
+There are a few disadvantages to using wxRichTextCtrl. It is not native,
so does not behave exactly as a native wxTextCtrl, although common editing conventions
are followed. Users may miss the built-in spelling correction on Mac OS X, or any
special character input that may be provided by the native control. It would also
-be a bad choice if intended users rely on screen readers that would be unhappy
+be a poor choice if intended users rely on screen readers that would be not work well
with non-native text input implementation. You might mitigate this by providing
the choice between wxTextCtrl and wxRichTextCtrl, with fewer features in the
former case.
-wxRichTextCtrl does not yet support printing directly, but content can be converted
-to HTML which can then be used with \helpref{wxHtmlEasyPrinting}{wxhtmleasyprinting}.
-
-The following screenshot shows the wxRichTextCtrl sample in action:
+A good way to understand wxRichTextCtrl's capabilities is to compile and run the
+sample, {\tt samples/richtext}, and browse the code. The following screenshot shows the sample in action:
$$\image{8cm;0cm}{richtextctrl.gif}$$
\subsection{Programming with wxRichTextCtrl}
+\subsubsection{Starting to use wxRichTextCtrl}
+
You need to include {\tt <wx/richtext/richtextctrl.h>} in your source, and link
with the appropriate wxWidgets library with {\tt richtext} suffix. Put the rich text
library first in your link line to avoid unresolved symbols.
Then you can create a wxRichTextCtrl, with the wxWANT\_CHARS style if you want tabs to
be processed by the control rather than being used for navigation between controls.
-It's helpful to have a model of how styling works. Any piece of text can have its
-style changed, but there also two global notions of style. The control's {\it basic} style
-is the fundamental style for the whole control, to which other character and paragraph styles are
-applied. For example, you can change the control's overall font by either calling SetBasicStyle with
-the appropriate font style, or by calling SetFont.
-
-The {\it default} style, on the other hand, is applied to subsequently inserted
-content. You might click on a Bold formatting tool, which sets bold as one of the default
-attributes, and typing will appear in bold. Then when you select Italic, both
-bold and italic attributes are applied as you type. The default attribute
-is set with \helpref{SetDefaultStyle}{wxrichtextctrlsetdefaultstyle}.
+\subsubsection{wxRichTextCtrl and styles}
+
+Styling attributes are represented by three classes: \helpref{wxTextAttr}{wxtextattr}, \helpref{wxTextAttrEx}{wxtextattrex} and \helpref{wxRichTextAttr}{wxrichtextattr}.
+wxTextAttr is shared across all controls that are derived from wxTextCtrlBase and
+can store basic character and paragraph attributes. wxTextAttrEx derives
+from wxTextAttr and adds some further attributes that are only supported
+by wxRichTextCtrl. Finally, wxRichTextAttr is a more efficient version
+of wxTextAttrEx that doesn't use a wxFont object and can be used to
+query styles more quickly. wxTextAttrEx and wxRichTextAttr are largely
+interchangeable and have suitable conversion operators between them.
+
+When setting a style, the flags of the attribute object determine which
+attributes are applied. When querying a style, the passed flags are ignored
+except (optionally) to determine whether attributes should be retrieved from
+character content or from the paragraph object.
+
+wxRichTextCtrl takes a layered approach to styles, so that different parts of
+the content may be responsible for contributing different attributes to the final
+style you see on the screen.
+
+There are four main notions of style within a control:
+
+\begin{enumerate}\itemsep=0pt
+\item {\bf Basic style:} the fundamental style of a control, onto which any other
+styles are layered. It provides default attributes, and changing the basic style
+may immediately change the look of the content depending on what other styles
+the content uses. Calling wxRichTextCtrl::SetFont changes the font for the basic style.
+The basic style is set with \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl::SetBasicStyle}{wxrichtextctrlsetbasicstyle}.
+\item {\bf Paragraph style:} each paragraph has attributes that are set independently
+from other paragraphs and independently from the content within the paragraph.
+Normally, these attributes are paragraph-related, such as alignment and indentation,
+but it is possible to set character attributes too.
+The paragraph style can be set independently of its content by passing wxRICHTEXT\_SETSTYLE\_PARAGRAPHS\_ONLY
+to \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl::SetStyleEx}{wxrichtextctrlsetstyleex}.
+\item {\bf Character style:} characters within each paragraph can have attributes.
+A single character, or a run of characters, can have a particular set of attributes.
+The character style can be with \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl::SetStyle}{wxrichtextctrlsetstyle} or
+\helpref{wxRichTextCtrl::SetStyleEx}{wxrichtextctrlsetstyleex}.
+\item {\bf Default style:} this is the `current' style that determines the
+style of content that is subsequently typed, pasted or programmatically inserted.
+The default style is set with \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl::SetDefaultStyle}{wxrichtextctrlsetdefaultstyle}.
+\end{enumerate}
+
+What you see on the screen is the dynamically {\it combined} style, found by merging
+the first three of the above style types (the fourth is only a guide for future content
+insertion and therefore does not affect the currently displayed content).
+
+To make all this more concrete, here are examples of where you might set these different
+styles:
+
+\begin{enumerate}\itemsep=0pt
+\item You might set the {\bf basic style} to have a Times Roman font in 12 point,
+left-aligned, with two millimetres of spacing after each paragraph.
+\item You might set the {\bf paragraph style} (for one particular paragraph) to
+be centred.
+\item You might set the {\bf character style} of one particular word to bold.
+\item You might set the {\bf default style} to be underlined, for subsequent
+inserted text.
+\end{enumerate}
+
+Naturally you can do any of these things either using your own UI, or programmatically.
+
+The basic wxTextCtrl doesn't make the same distinctions as wxRichTextCtrl regarding
+attribute storage. So we need finer control when setting and retrieving
+attributes. \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl::SetStyleEx}{wxrichtextctrlsetstyleex} takes a {\it flags} parameter:
+
+\begin{itemize}\itemsep=0pt
+\item wxRICHTEXT\_SETSTYLE\_OPTIMIZE specifies that the style should be changed only if
+the combined attributes are different from the attributes for the current object. This is important when
+applying styling that has been edited by the user, because he has just edited the {\it combined} (visible)
+style, and wxRichTextCtrl wants to leave unchanged attributes associated with their original objects
+instead of applying them to both paragraph and content objects.
+\item wxRICHTEXT\_SETSTYLE\_PARAGRAPHS\_ONLY specifies that only paragraph objects within the given range
+should take on the attributes.
+\item wxRICHTEXT\_SETSTYLE\_CHARACTERS\_ONLY specifies that only content objects (text or images) within the given range
+should take on the attributes.
+\item wxRICHTEXT\_SETSTYLE\_WITH\_UNDO specifies that the operation should be undoable.
+\end{itemize}
-(To be finished.)
+It's great to be able to change arbitrary attributes in a wxRichTextCtrl, but
+it can be unwieldy for the user or programmer to set attributes separately. Word processors have collections
+of styles that you can tailor or use as-is, and this means that you can set a heading with one click
+instead of marking text in bold, specifying a large font size, and applying a certain
+paragraph spacing and alignment for every such heading. Similarly,
+wxWidgets provides a class called \helpref{wxRichTextStyleSheet}{wxrichtextstylesheet} which manages style definitions
+(\helpref{wxRichTextParagraphStyleDefinition}{wxrichtextparagraphstyledefinition}, \helpref{wxRichTextListStyleDefinition}{wxrichtextliststyledefinition} and \helpref{wxRichTextCharacterStyleDefinition}{wxrichtextcharacterstyledefinition}).
+Once you have added definitions to a style sheet and associated it with a wxRichTextCtrl,
+you can apply a named definition to a range of text. The classes \helpref{wxRichTextStyleComboCtrl}{wxrichtextstylecomboctrl}\rtfsp
+and \helpref{wxRichTextStyleListBox}{wxrichtextstylelistbox} can be used to present the user with a list
+of styles in a sheet, and apply them to the selected text.
+
+You can reapply a style sheet to the contents of the control, by calling \helpref{wxRichTextCtrl::ApplyStyleSheet}{wxrichtextctrlapplystylesheet}.
+This is useful if the style definitions have changed, and you want the content to reflect this.
+It relies on the fact that when you apply a named style, the style definition name is recorded in the
+content. So ApplyStyleSheet works by finding the paragraph attributes with style names and re-applying the definition's
+attributes to the paragraph. Currently, this works with paragraph and list style definitions only.
+
+\subsection{wxRichTextCtrl dialogs}\label{wxrichtextctrldialogs}
+
+wxRichTextCtrl comes with standard dialogs to make it easier to implement
+text editing functionality.
+
+\helpref{wxRichTextFormattingDialog}{wxrichtextformattingdialog} can be used
+for character or paragraph formatting, or a combination of both. It's a wxPropertySheetDialog
+with the following available tabs: Font, Indents \& Spacing, Tabs, Bullets, Style, and List Style.
+You can select which pages will be shown by supplying flags to the dialog constructor.
+In a character formatting dialog, typically only the Font page will be shown.
+In a paragraph formatting dialog, you'll show the Indents \& Spacing, Tabs and Bullets
+pages. The Style tab is useful when editing a style definition.
+
+You can customize this dialog by providing your own wxRichTextFormattingDialogFactory
+object, which tells the formatting dialog how many pages are supported, what their identifiers
+are, and how to creates the pages.
+
+\helpref{wxRichTextStyleOrganiserDialog}{wxrichtextstyleorganiserdialog} is a multi-purpose dialog
+that can be used for managing style definitions, browsing styles and applying them, or selecting list styles with
+a renumber option. See the sample for usage - it is used for the "Manage Styles" and "Bullets and Numbering"
+menu commands.
+
+\helpref{wxSymbolPickerDialog}{wxsymbolpickerdialog} lets the user insert a symbol from
+a specified font. It has no wxRichTextCtrl dependencies besides being included in
+the rich text library.
\subsection{How wxRichTextCtrl is implemented}
The content is represented by a hierarchy of objects, all derived from
wxRichTextObject. An object might be an image, a fragment of text, a paragraph,
-or a whole buffer. Objects store a wxRichTextAttr containing style information;
-although it contains both paragraph formatting and character style, the
-paragraph style information is ignored by children of a paragraph (only
-character style is relevant to these objects).
+or a whole buffer. Objects store a wxTextAttrEx containing style information;
+a paragraph object can contain both paragraph and character information, but
+content objects such as text can only store character information. The final
+style displayed in the control or in a printout is a combination of base
+style, paragraph style and content (character) style.
The top of the hierarchy is the buffer, a kind of wxRichTextParagraphLayoutBox.
-containing further wxRichTextParagraph objects, each of which can include text and
-images.
+containing further wxRichTextParagraph objects, each of which can include text,
+images and potentially other types of object.
Each object maintains a range (start and end position) measured
-from the start of the main parent box.
+from the start of the main parent object.
When Layout is called on an object, it is given a size which the object
must limit itself to, or one or more flexible directions (vertical
object, a wxRichTextPlainText object. When styling is applied to part of
this object, the object is decomposed into separate objects, one object
for each different character style. So each object within a paragraph always has
-just one wxRichTextAttr object to denote its character style. Of course, this can
+just one wxTextAttrEx object to denote its character style. Of course, this can
lead to fragmentation after a lot of edit operations, potentially leading
to several objects with the same style where just one would do. So
a Defragment function is called when updating the control's display, to ensure that
the minimum number of objects is used.
-(To be finished.)
-
\subsection{wxRichTextCtrl roadmap}
\wxheading{Bugs}
This is an incomplete list of bugs.
-\begin{itemize}
+\begin{itemize}\itemsep=0pt
\item Moving the caret up at the beginning of a line sometimes incorrectly positions the
caret.
+\item As the selection is expanded, the text jumps slightly due to kerning differences between
+drawing a single text string versus drawing several fragments separately. This could
+be improved by using wxDC::GetPartialTextExtents to calculate exactly where the separate fragments
+should be drawn. Note that this problem also applies to separation of text fragments due to difference in their attributes.
\end{itemize}
\wxheading{Features}
This is a list of some of the features that have yet to be implemented. Help with them will be appreciated.
-\begin{itemize}
-\item Printing
+\begin{itemize}\itemsep=0pt
\item RTF input and output
+\item Conversion from HTML
+\item Open Office input and output
\item Floating images, with content wrapping around them
\item A ruler control
\item Standard editing toolbars
-\item Automatic list numbering
\item Tables
+\item Bitmap bullets
+\item Borders
\item Text frames
-\item Add ability to show images in wxHTML output (currently uses embedded data suitable only for real browsers)
-\item More complete stylesheet viewer, plus style sheet editing dialogs
-\item Ability to read and write style sheets
+\item Justified text, in print/preview at least
\end{itemize}
There are also things that could be done to take advantage of the underlying text capabilities of the platform;
projects / wxWidgets.git / blobdiff