It can be confusing working with the Formatted Text Control sometimes.  It has 4 modes and sometimes it’s not very clear what the difference is.  I’ll try to correct that.

Page View

Page is the easiest to explain as it looks like the page is held at a distance and shows areas outside of the page.  This is very much what you would expect a Print Preview to look like and is What You See Is What You Get.

To change to Page View us the FormattedText.setPageViewMode command.

Normal View

Normal is very similar Page view except the document is shown in one continuous page.  The areas outside of the document area are a simple color.

To change to Normal View use the FormattedText.setNormalViewMode command.

Edit View

Edit expands the document area to the bounds of the controls and reformats the text to fit the area.  This is NOT a What You See Is What You Get view.

One thing to keep in mind when switching to Edit View (from a developers perspective) is that you will probably want to call the FormattedText.setEditViewMode method to reset the Edit Margins.  On the flip side, if you go back to Page or Normal view you will want to reset the document margins to their real values.

To change to Edit View use the FormattedText.setEditViewMode command.

Single View

Single View is a little like Normal View where the document is show in all one continuous document.  However, Single View does not wrap text at the right side of the page.

To change to Edit View use the setSingleViewMode command.

Hopefully the clears up the confusion.  We tend to run in one of two modes, either Page or Edit.

Q:  Once I purchase the Spell Checking Utilities from BKeeney Software, do I need to purchase anything else from Wintertree?

A:  No.  The purchase of the plugin covers everything you need.  We handle the licensing with Wintertree (which is a majority of the cost of the plugin) automatically when you purchase the plugin.

Sometimes there are problems when you place an FTC on a window by copying and pasting it from another project or window.  When you start typing you may hear a number of beeps.

When this happens make sure AcceptFocus = true.  This should solve the problem.

The easiest way to do this is through PayPal by following the directions at https://www.paypal.com/webapps/helpcenter/article/?currentIssueID=185241&m=SWS.  If that link doesn’t work (the links seem to change on a regular basis) you can always contact support@bkeeney.com.

To connect your FormattedTextControl to the Edit->SelectAll Menu is relatively easy.  Add a menu handler for your EditSelectAll menu command in the window where your control resides.  Then, if your control is named ftc1 you’d have something like this:

Function EditSelectAll() As Boolean   

ftc1.selectAll

return true

End Function

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To determine the height of the user content use the FTDocument.GetTotalPageLength function.  It returns the total height of the document.

So to get the height of yrou content you’d need to do something like this (where ftc is your FormattedText control):

dim dTotalHeight as double
dTotalHeight = ftc.getDoc.getTotalPageLength
ftc.Height = dTotalHeight

You’ll probably want to include a sensible maximum size. Since there’s no fixed limit to the document size you could end up with a very large control if a user does something unexpected like pasting in the entire contents of a book or something.

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If you want to change the page color of the FTC you can set it using the FTDocument.SetBackgroundColor method.

Example:  In the open event of your Formatted Text Control Instance you can use this:

me.GetDoc.setPageBackgroundColor &cFFFF00

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BKeeney Software announces that version 5.0.7 of Simple Help Editor is now available for download.

Simple Help Editor allows developers to easily and quickly develop full-featured help systems for Macintosh and Windows applications using their native help systems.  It also creates HTML help files that can be used in any browser.

This version is a maintenance release and is recommended for all users.  Among the changes:

• A bug fix that prevents Mac OS X users from receiving update notices
• A licensing bug that prevented registered users from adding more than 15 pages

For more information, including downloads and pricing, please visit http://www.bkeeney.com/products/simple-help-editor

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BKeeney Software is pleased to announce that a new 29 minute Real Studio training video is now available.  This video shows users how to enable their Real Studio applications to use HiDPI (Retina) displays with higher resolutions.

Direct URL:  http://www.bkeeney.com/RealStudioTraining/realstudiotraining.cgi?video=309

BKeeney Software has over 36 hours of Real Studio training videos.  Most projects come with a fully functional Real Studio project file with code that can be used in your own applications.More information on the Real Studio video training can be found athttp://www.bkeeney.com/RealStudioTraining/realstudiotraining.cgi

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