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Yet Another Code Site
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This site is dedicated to advancing the
understanding of Borland's C++ Builder, the Borland Visual
Component Library (VCL), and related Microsoft Windows API
issues.
In particular, I have spent an inexcusable amount of time
working through many of the problems associated with Rich Edit
controls. Here you will find information on using OLE with
Rich Edit controls, using the relatively unknown Rich Edit
version 2.0, using the even newer Rich Edit version 3.0, answers
to frequently asked questions about Rich Edit controls, and other
information that I hope you will find useful.
To save others a little effort, I have made most of the code
that I use available for downloading. Unless otherwise
stated, you may use it freely with the following limitation:
You may not distribute the code to others. Please send them
here if they are interested. If you find the code useful, a
little credit would be appreciated, but is not required.
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New Stuff
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Things recently added or changed on the
site. Typically, only the last five or six changes are
noted here so, if you have not been here in a while, you might
want to scan through this entire page.
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The TAE TraceToolKit Is Now Available (October 17, 2000)
The
most frustrating part of being a developer is not getting useful
debugging information from users. With this small toolkit,
you can get detailed trace information from your users. See
the Code Samples section
for new code.
TaeRichEdit
Component users: I am adding trace support to the
TaeRichEdit Component. You will be able to disable the
trace support for release builds, of course. (Actually, you will
be able to disable the trace support in debug builds as well.)
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StarOffice Is Now Open Source! (October 13,
2000)
StarOffice, a free Microsoft Office compatible
application suite for Windows, Unix, and Solaris (a Macintosh
version coming soon) is now available as open source. See
the Open Source
Efforts links for more information.
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Interim Bug Fixes for the TaeRichEdit Component Available
(September 9, 2000)
Interim bug fixes for the TaeRichEdit
Component are now available which address GPF problems with
certain printers, improve STL compatibility, and correct certain
problems not previously reported. The changes are not yet
fully incorporated into the component beta distribution code but
are supplied as replacements for *.cpp & *.h files in the
1.0.0.9 distribution. See the TaeRichEdit
Component section for more information.
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New Code: Regular Expression Searches
After some
lengthy effort, I have developed a light-weight class to
implement regular expression searches for TRichEdit components.
See the Code Samples
section for the TTaeRegExp class. If you do not know what
"regular expressions" are, check out the Regular
Expression Syntax.page. (Note: This code "upgrades"
the BCB/VCL from PCRE 2.x to PCRE 3.4.)
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Open Source Efforts Links
Thanks to site visitors, I
recently became aware of open source efforts that may interest
you. Some of these include near replacements for Rich Edit
controls, RTF compatible editors, syntax-highlighting editors,
and sites with links to other open source endeavors. See
the new Open Source
Efforts links.
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Code
Section
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Free code samples, snippets, and cheap
tricks. Please see the restrictions on redistribution at
the top of this page.
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TaeRichEdit Component
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The TaeRichEdit Component is a full-featured TRichEdit
analogue. It supports Rich Edit 2.0 & 3.0 character and
paragraph formatting; provides OLE support (including embedded
graphics); expands printing options to include headers, footers,
and border lines; and much more. The Borland C++ Builder
(no Delphi) source is included. The component is free for
non-commercial use.
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September 09, 2000:
A set of interim fixes for version 1.0.0.9 is now available.
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Component
information and downloads
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Component bug
reports and history
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Code Samples
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Most of the code samples were written in BCB 3.0 and should be
simple to port to BCB 4.0. Recent and future code samples
are or will be BCB 4.0. See the FAQ section for information
on using the controls with BCB 1.0.
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Rich Edit 3.0 Code Samples
Rich Edit 3.0 is now
freely available to developers. If you have it, here is the
code you need to get started (a really basic class to get v3.0
loaded) and code samples to demonstrate the new features that I
have tested (paragraph numbering, zoom in/out, saving/restoring
the scroll position, etc.), MSDN documentation errors that I have
overcome, and unexpected limitations that I have encountered.
This page will definitely be changing frequently for a while, so
check back often.
Go
to the Rich Edit 3.0 Code Samples page. Last
updated 05-29-1999.
If you do not yet have the new Rich Edit control DLL, see the
FAQs section for an
overview of the promised new features.
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MEd – A Rich
Edit 2.0 Sample
MEd is the project for which most of the
code on this site was developed.
The program executable is posted here as an example of what can
be done with the Rich Edit 2.0 control.
If you find code on this site that does not work as expected, as
a favor to me, try this executable to determine if the
sample code is munged or if my "best effort" does not
solve the problem.
Go
to the MEd - A Rich Edit 2.0 Sample page. Last
updated 06-25-1999.
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Add OLE functionality to TRichEdit (TRichEditOle &
TRichEditOleCallback classes)
Want
to insert a bitmap into a TRichEdit component? Here is some
code you can use that adds bitmap support and more.
Download
RichEditOle.zip.
Last updated 08-30-2000, 12KB.
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Add Rich Edit 2.0 functionality to TRichEdit (TRichEdit20
class)
The Microsoft Rich Edit control v2.0 adds multiple
undo/redo and much more. See Using
Rich Edit 2.0 with BCB for more information.
(Note: This class optionally uses the TRichEditOle &
TRichEditOleCallback classes above.) This download also
contains classes that extend the TTextAttributes and
TParaAttributes classes to provide support for the WinAPI
CHARFORMAT2 and PARAFORMAT2 structures. These classes,
TTextAttributes2 and TParaAttributes2, further extend the VCL
classes to set individual character styles to text selections
containing a mix of formats.
Download
RichEdit20.zip.
Last updated 10-04-1998, 115KB.
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Access RTF codes in TRichEdit (TRichEditRawRtf class)
Need
to copy formatted text from one TRichEdit control to another?
Want to insert RTF format codes directly into a TRichEdit
control? This class makes it simple.
Download
RichEditRawRtf.zip.
Last updated 10-19-1998, 13KB.
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Use the native Windows Browse Folders Dialog
(TBrowseFolders component class)
The
Borland VCL implements almost every common dialog that you might
need – except for this one. If you want to let users
select a folder (but not a specific file), this component may
help.
Download
BrowseFoldersBcb3.zip.
Last updated 07-19-1998, 4KB.
Download
BrowseFoldersBcb4.zip.
Last updated 04-26-1999, 4KB.
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Use the native Windows Page Setup Dialog (TPageSetupDialog
component class)
Oddly,
the Borland VCL does not include a Page Setup Dialog component.
Here is my solution.
Download
PageSetupBcb3.zip.
Last updated 07-19-1998, 4KB.
Download
PageSetupBcb4.zip.
Last updated 04-26-1999, 4KB.
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Windows mailslots class (TMailSlot class).
Add
"mailslots" to your application. Can be used to ensure
that only one instance of an application runs and, if needed, let
secondary instances send messages to the first application
instance.
(For a more common approach to this problem,
see The
Singleton Application at The
Bits hosted by UK-BUG.)
Download MailSlot.zip.
Last updated 02-24-2000, 16KB.
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Microsoft Office RTF Converters (TRtfConverter &
TRtfConverterList classes).
Import or export a variety of
Microsoft Office file formats to and from TRichEdit
controls.
Download
RichEditConv.zip.
Last updated 02-06-1999, 51KB.
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Regular expressions searches for Rich Edit controls
(TTaeRegExp class)
A light-weight class to add regular
expression searches to TRichEdit controls. The class
supports both forward and reverse searches. For an
explanation of the VCL regular expression syntax, see the Regular
Expression Syntax page.
Download
TaeRegExp.zip. Last updated 08-27-2000, 36KB.
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Upgrading the BCB regular expression library to PCRE
3.4
The regular expression library shipped with BCB4 &
5 is based upon PCRE 2.x. This archive includes the entire
PCRE 3.4 distribution, code modifications for BCB5, project files
for building the new version of the library, and updated versions
of the TTaeRegExp class and demonstration code.
Download
PCRE3.4.zip. Last updated 09-02-2000, 463KB.
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The
TAE TraceToolKit
The most frustrating part of being a
developer is not getting useful debugging information from
users. If you are willing to invest a little time, you can
get detailed trace information from your users.
Download
TaeTraceToolkit.zip. Last updated 10-19-2000,
406KB.
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Code Snippets
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Small pieces of code that have proved useful more than once.
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If you are willing to invest a little brain-power to
understand the small snips of code, you can learn how to:
Send the contents of a
TRichEdit via e-mail using MAPI.
Get the user's Windows login
name.
Get the icon or title
associated with a file type.
Get the long name of a file.
Convert a byte to hexadecimal.
And more...
Go to the Code
Snippets Page
Last updated 03-03-2001.
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Cheap Tricks
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Even smaller pieces of code, IDE settings, other miscellaneous
tricks and tips taken largely from newsgroup posts. They
are not necessarily tested, complete, or accurate, so use them at
your own risk. (Worse yet for mono-lingual visitors, the
tricks may be Delphi or assembler code.)
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Go to the Cheap
Tricks Page
Last updated 03-06-2001.
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Papers
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Extended discussions on particularly
vexing programming problems.
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Rich Edit Control Papers
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Extended discussions on how to use Rich Edit controls.
Start with these and you can skip many of the FAQs.
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Window handles vs.
TRichEdit and other VCL controls.
The
VCL does not always create controls when you would expect.
Worse yet, sometimes it destroys and recreates them, silently
destroying your changes to the WinAPI.
Last updated
10-28-1998.
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BCB 1.0 & 3.0
TRichEdit bugs.
Not
a comprehensive list of bugs, but definitely some you need to
know about. BCB4 bugs to be added as soon as I find
any....
Last updated 08-04-1999.
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Using Rich Edit 2.0 with
BCB.
All
versions of the TRichEdit control use the Microsoft Rich Edit 1.0
control. Rich Edit v2.0 adds a lot of
features to the Rich Edit control. Here is a summary of
what is new and where you can get it (maybe).
Last updated
10-28-1998.
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Printing and Previewing Rich
Edit Controls - Part 1: About TRichEdit::Print().
You
can print TRichEdit text using Print(). Here is why it may
not be good enough.
Last updated 10-22-1998.
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Printing and Previewing Rich
Edit Controls - Part 2: Printing Rich Edit Controls.
An
excruciatingly detailed explanation of printing Rich Edit text to
a printer.
Last updated 06-30-1999.
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Printing and Previewing Rich
Edit Controls - Part 3: Previewing Rich Edit Controls.
An
equally excruciating explanation of displaying a preview of Rich
Edit text – and some imperfections.
Last updated
05-14-2001.
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Printing and
Previewing Rich Edit Controls - Part 4: Page-Breaks in Rich Edit
Controls.
Adding
page-breaks turned out to be easier than I expected. This
part explains one technique and includes sample code.
Last
updated 06-27-1999.
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Faster
Rich Edit Syntax Highlighting.
This
is a Microsoft Word97 document containing the full text of an
article that appeared in the October 1999 issue of the C++Builder
Developer's Journal.
Last updated 02-12-2000.
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Other Papers
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Extended discussions on other topics. Windows API and
VCL issues are the focus.
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Creating a Windows
callback to a member function.
Borland
code can set up a member function to be a Windows callback.
You can do it, too.
Last updated 10-28-1998.
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Storing program state in the
Windows Registry.
Storing
information in the Windows Registry may not be as difficult as
you think.
Last updated 11-13-1998.
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VCL
Regular Expression Library Syntax.
The
BCB4 and BCB5 VCL includes a regular expression library.
This paper describes the syntax used by the VCL library and
explains where to get more recent versions of the library.
The
TTaeRegExp class available on this site implements a simple class
for using regular expressions with TRichEdit components.
See the Code Samples
section for the sample code.
Last updated 08-27-2000.
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Frequently Asked
Questions
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I have seen these questions asked more
than once. Maybe I have an answer – and, then again,
maybe I don't.
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Solutions to common
problems
Answers to common questions
about Rich Edit controls and other WinAPI issues. Some
fixes for known problems with code samples and classes available
on this site. Lots of tidbits and loose ends.
Last
updated 03-04-2001.
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Information on the
new Rich Edit 3.0 control
Version 3.0
adds a few new features. Here is what I have learned so far
and where you can get it.
Last updated 01-13-2000.
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TRichEdit
Changes Between BCB4 & BCB5
Naturally, the first
thing that I did after upgrading to BCB5 was try to determine
what changes had been made to the TRichEdit class. Here is
what I found out.
Last updated 02-23-2000.
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Feedback
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Contacting me is easy and welcome.
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Please feel free to send me e-mail. In
particular, I am interested in corrections to the site and
additional information on Rich Edit controls. Of course, I
am happy to answer questions on just about any topic, so do not
hesitate to ask.
(Well, almost any topic. Please, please do not ask me
questions about homework assignments. Learning is a journey
through which you make mistakes, find dead-ends, and think very
hard. You are supposed to struggle a little, maybe a lot,
and you would be cheating yourself if I did your assignment for
you. If you need help with homework, please ask your
instructor -- he is paid to teach and is, I trust, much better at
it than I am. Having said all of that, I have answered the
most frequently asked homework question on the FAQs
page -- how to print the results of the C/C++ homework
assignment when using Borland C++ Builder.)
You can reach me by
e-mail at rediv@bellsouth.net.
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