Introduction to PowerBuilder

RichTextEdit Control

RTE control gives you the power of WYSIWYG text editing in PowerBuilder application. Using this control you can provide word-processor like interface. You can see the real power of a RTE control only when you share data from a DataWindow.

General Properties: Create a new window and place RTE control on it. Similar to any other window control, this control has 'visible', 'enabled', 'DragDropIcon', 'DragAuto' and 'Pointer' properties.

RTE Control showing invisible characters

Invisible Characters: You can control the type of characters that are to be displayed in this control. For example, if you wish to display tab characters, you need to turn on 'Tabs Visible' property. So are 'Returns Visible', 'Spaces Visible', 'Fields Visible' properties. 'Fields Visible' property is useful when you share a DataWindow /DataStore with a RTE control and use DataWindow / DataStore fields in the RTE control; otherwise, this property has no effect on the control display behavior.

Popup menu: If you have used MS-Word, you might have used popup menu in the word-processor for context sensitive operations such as Cut, Paste, Copy, etc.. Similarly, you can make PowerBuilder to display the popup menu for the RTE control by enabling the 'Popup Menu' property. Except for a single mouse click you don't need to write code to display the popup menu in the RTE control.

Paragraph properties dialog box at run-time

RTE Control Toolbars: You can display a toolbar in the RTE control by turning on the 'Toolbar' property. Don't mix-up RTE specific toolbar with the general toolbars such as Powerbar, Painterbar and custom built toolbar for your application. RTE has one more toolbar called a 'Tabbar', that allows the user to set tab positions for different lines in the RTE control text. Similarly you can make the ruler bar visible.

Properties dialog box at run-time.

Word Wrap: By turning on 'Word Wrap' property, you can control whether the text should wrap around if it reaches the right margin of the RTE control.

Margins: Margins can be set using 'Left Margin', 'Right Margin', 'Top Margin' and 'Bottom Margin' properties.

Undo Depth: Maximum number of undo levels can be set using 'Undo Depth' property. The default value for this property is zero, that means nothing can be undone.

Pictures as Frames: When there are more pictures in a document or when you want to display the RTE control faster, turn on 'Pictures As Frame' option. By default, PowerBuilder displays the picture as it is. However, you can choose not to and instead display a frame area that is equivalent to the picture dimensions.

Print Document Name: When a document is printed from the RTE control the name specified in this property is used to be displayed in the print queue .

Home	Previous Lesson: Tab Control Next Lesson: Drawing Objects