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A-Shell Consolidated Reference

xcall XTEXT, opcode, flags, src, dst, srow, scol, erow, ecol, exitcode, txtctl {, auxdata, fmtdef}

XTEXT provides access to a general purpose Windows text editing control in the A-Shell GUI environment. It is similar in concept to the INFLD multi-line feature, but goes well beyond INFLD to offer such features as:

Ability to perform I/O to / from either text buffers or files.
Essentially no limit on the size of the text, particularly in file mode.
Optional RTF (Rich Text Format) support, including character attributes (bold, italic, etc.), fonts, paragraph styles, justification, etc.
Search and replace.
Optional / configurable interface components, such as ruler, toolbar, status bar.
May be contained within another window or float independently (in which case it can have its own title bar and menu).
Ability to protect existing text when adding new text.

Programmers familiar with XTREE may find that XTEXT is to a simple multi-line edit control as XTREE is to a simple list box, and in fact, the parameter structure and general design of XTEXT have a number of similarities to XTREE.

XTEXT requires the presence of an external module, ter##.dll, which must be in the Windows system directory or the directory from which ashw32.exe was loaded.

See the updated ashell.def (edit 135+) for definitions of all symbols used in XTEXT (they all start with TX) and xtext.map for the layout of the txtctl parameter.

See the program XTX1.BP in EXLIB:[908,40] for a working example and utility for testing the usage of various flags and parameter options.

History

2016 December, A-Shell 6.3.1541:  Add flag TXF_SILENT.

2013 Feburary, A-Shell 6.1.1338: XTEXT now automatically adds "Paste Special" to the context menu when complex clipboard formats are available. Depending on the formats, the menu option will open a submenu with more specific paste options, such as picture, spreadsheet, etc. To customize the wording of the menu option, add or modify the 004,011 message in the SYSMSG.xxx file. All SYSMSG.xxx included in the release package have been updated with rough translations. Note that if you don't want this capability, you can disable it by setting the TXMF1_EDIT_PASTESP flag in the TXC.MENUMASK1 field.

2011 Feburary , A-Shell 5.1.1207: ter18.dll and hts13.dll are supported if using XTEXT, and support for earlier versions is dropped. The files txml2.dll and the Windows library msxml.dll version 2.x or newer is used by and required for the docx import feature.

Subtopics

Text Editing Overview

XTEXT Parameters

Other XTEXT Topics