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Build 2.2.0.35 posted

I've posted another new version today. This version has all of the new properties and methods for the zMemo component.

Lots of stuff was added to zMemo to allow you to manipulate the rich text stored in the control. A full set of Text Styles and Paragraph Styles can be used.

Also, I fixed the problems with newlines in text of the Add method, and added the new AddLine method for adding a line to the end of the control and making that line visible (like for appending to log files).

You can't yet manipulate tables (via a script) stored in the memo yet. I'll add routines for that in the future. You can still add and modify tables interactively. I just need to dig into the guts of the code and find out how tables are stored to let you manipulate them directly from a script.

Oh yeah, it's all documented too :)

Have fun!

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 867 Location: USA

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 5:41 am

If you have any suggestions for making the syntax closer to stuff people are familiar with, let me know.

There isn't a method that sets the X,Y location because with the complex items that the component can contain, the X,Y position doesn't actually make any sense. For example, imagine an HTML page with various graphic elements embedded in it, and fonts of various sizes. What measurement would you use for rows and columns? There isn't any way to measure that with a non-grid text component.

So, in the zMemo, you can set Bookmarks, and goto specific locations of specific items. You can attempt to return a CurLine or CurCol X,Y position, but it can be slow to compute and doesn't mean much when using a complex layout as mentioned above.

I have no idea how other rich text controls work. I always hated the rich text control in Windows itself because it was such a pain to control various text attributes. I think the methods and properties in the zMemo control better reflect the type of operation you want to perform (like setting the Bold property, or Color property).

But it's very possible that I've forgotten some important properties or methods, so feedback is definitely welcome!

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 867 Location: USA

Sorry for the rambling- see if it makes any sense to you.

Beginner Joined: 24 Mar 2005 Posts: 16

Some syntax question of the zMemo Editor example

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 3:34 pm

Kawawong: There are several "events" in zApp and I haven't documented any events yet. It's actually zApp stuff, not VBscript stuff, so it's not surprising that you'd be confused. I hope to have events documented later this week.

Tarn: The more I thought about it last night, the more I completely agree. Of course I've dealt with the concept of SelStart and SelLength before. That's what all normal Windows edit boxes use. Sometimes it can be a pain (does a newline take up 1 character or 2?), but programmers are used to it.

The TRichView component I'm using doesn't implement the normal SelStart and SelLength properties. Everything internally is kept as a reference to an "item" in the component (an item number and an offset within an item). So when I was exposing properties and methods yesterday, I was pretty much sticking to what they already implemented.

But I thought of a trick that would allow something like the SelStart concept and I'm going to mess with it today and see what I can come up with.

Stuff like the SelectWord and SelectLine will probably still remain, however, since it never hurts to have more than one way to do something (concept borrowed from zMUD). And I've always found doing a SelectWord myself to be tedious, so I think it's a good help for making programming easier (which is what zApp is all about).

Bookmarks are also a different concept. Bookmarks are like "named locations" but the advantage of a bookmark is that they are tied to the text itself rather than just being a floating location. For example, if you set a bookmark called "Test" and then add the text "This is a test", then sometime later you insert a whole bunch of stuff before this text, the bookmark will still point to "This is a test" even after the insertion. This is a really cool feature that normal text controls don't have. So you can't just implement Bookmarks with a simple "SetLocation" type of functionality...you'd end up having to track all insertion and deletion before the location to keep it in synch with the text it it pointing to.

The trickiest part to handling the "SetLocation" functionality is that not every item in the component is necessarily text. For example, I think a picture has a "size" of a single character. And I'm not sure what they do for tables. So, the stuff I implement might work for normal text, but might have problems for more complex contents. But I'm going to play with it and see what I can do.

Stay tuned.