News
TX Text Control ActiveX 16.0 Released
Text Control releases updated word processing components for ActiveX application development.
Word processing component maker
Text Control GmbH today announced the release of TX Text Control ActiveX 16.0. The updated ActiveX controls are part of a family of products focused on enabling the integration of word processor functionality into native and managed .NET applications. The TX Text Control line includes versions for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Forms, as well as ActiveX.
"Overall we delivered more than 40,000 licenses of TX Text Control. A significant part [of that] was ActiveX," wrote Bjoern Meyer, Text Control vice president of product management, in an email interview. "People need newer document formats such as DOCX or PDF/A, so a newer release is required."
Meyer said that questions about Microsoft's support for the VB runtime and its MFC 4.2 strategy have prompted many customers to consider a transition from ActiveX to .NET. Still demand for the ActiveX version of TX Text Control remains. "The .NET Framework is the future and we are investing much more time and money in R&D for .NET. But we don't forget our existing ActiveX users," Meyer wrote.
Chief among the new capabilities of Text Control 16.0 is support for repeating table headers, which enable automatic display of headers for large tables that extend across multiple pages. The new version also adds interface tweaks, like new buttons for the TXButtonBar to adjust settings like font sizes and indents. A new interface also allows developers to integrate third-party spell checking components into TX Text Control based applications.
With the ActiveX 16.0 update, Text Control implemented the rendering engine found in the .NET-based WPF and Windows Forms versions of its product into the ActiveX version. According to the company, the ported engine allows a graphical representation of a page to be saved as a Visual Basic-compatible Picture object, which can then be exported to common graphic file formats.
The new ActiveX release brings Text Controls' support for that platform on par with WPF and Windows Forms. "Our controls are written in C++ (for ActiveX) and managed C++ ( for .NET)," Meyer wrote. "Porting that code to the ActiveX version is not easy, but [it's] possible."
TX Text Control ActiveX 16.0 is available in Standard ($549), Professional ($1149) and Enterprise ($2398) Editions. Team licenses are also available.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.