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Some additions to the wxRichTextCtrl overview.

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git-svn-id: https://svn.wxwidgets.org/svn/wx/wxWidgets/trunk@41963 c3d73ce0-8a6f-49c7-b76d-6d57e0e08775
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Julian Smart
2006-10-12 04:27:35 +00:00
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docs/latex/wx/richtextoverview.tex
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@@ -191,6 +191,8 @@ The following code is taken from the sample, and adds text and styles to a rich
\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.
@@ -198,19 +200,123 @@ 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.
\subsubsection{wxRichTextCtrl and styles}
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}.
Styling attributes are represented by one of three classes: \helpref{wxTextAttr}{wxtextattr}, \helpref{wxTextAttrEx}{wxtextattrex} and \helpref{wxRichTextAttr}{wxrichtextattr}.
wxTextAttr is shared across all controls that are derived from wxTextCtrl 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.
(To be finished.)
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}
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} 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 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, and 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{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}
@@ -225,8 +331,8 @@ paragraph style information is ignored by children of a paragraph (only
character style is relevant to these objects).
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.
@@ -251,24 +357,30 @@ 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.
Alternatively, it might be possible to use the difference between the width of text from
a to b+1, versus the width of the text from a to b added to the width of b to b+1.
Note that this problem also applies to separation of text fragments due to difference in their attributes.
\item Selection doesn't work properly for text that contains tabs.
\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}
\begin{itemize}\itemsep=0pt
\item Printing
\item RTF input and output
\item Floating images, with content wrapping around them