SyntaxEditor - XML End Tag Completion

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Friday, January 30, 2015 at 9:59am

PostBannerSyntaxEditorDevNotes

Let's have a look at a new feature that came to the advanced XML language for SyntaxEditor for WPF (via its Web Languages Add-on) in the latest 2014.2 maintenance release: the ability to auto-complete XML end tags.

Feature Description

The advanced XML language already has auto-end tag insertion features that occur as you type the > character at the end of a start tag.  In that scenario, the end tag is inserted immediately after the caret.  There are other times where you have deleted some text that may include an end tag that you wish to type back in again.

Say that you are editing a block of XML and start to type an end tag.  After typing the < character, the completion list will contain an item for closing the nearest open ancestor element (if any):

SyntaxEditorEndTagAutoComplete1

In the example above, you can see the "/colors" item in the completion list and how selecting it auto-completes the end tag.

End tag auto-completion also works if you put the caret after a </ and press Ctrl+Space, as in this example:

SyntaxEditorEndTagAutoComplete2

In the example above, Ctrl+Space is pressed at the caret's location to auto-complete the "colors>" text.

Summary

The features described above were added in the latest v2014.2 maintenance releases of our WPF Controls and are available for use.

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SyntaxEditor - Read-Only Regions

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 2:10pm

PostBannerSyntaxEditorDevNotes

Feature Description

SyntaxEditor documents have always had the ability to be fully read-only and developers can also can cancel specific text change events for more fine-grained control. That being said, there are many cases where developers want to have an easy way to tell SyntaxEditor that a certain of text should not be editable by the end user.  That's where read-only regions come into play.

SyntaxEditorReadOnlyRegion

Read-only regions are implemented using our powerful tagging mechanism.  There is a new IReadOnlyRegionTag interface (with related ReadOnlyRegionTag implementation class) that can be used to mark read-only regions.  Getting going is as easy as tagging a text range using an instance of that class.

Best of all, the ReadOnlyRegionTag class also implements IClassificationTag, which associates the tag with a classification type for read-only text and gets styled with a silver background.  Of course this is fully customizable if you wish to have a different appearance, or no appearance difference at all.

When the end user attempts to edit anything that would cross within a read-only range, the text change will realize that it intersects a read-only range and will cancel.  The text range protected by the read-only region remains unchanged.

This is a very handy feature for certain scenarios and was highly requested by our customers.

Summary

The read-only region features described above were added in the latest v2014.2 maintenance releases of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls and are available for use.

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WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML v2014.2 Maintenance Releases

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Wednesday, December 17, 2014 at 10:55am

20142MaintReleaseBlogPostBanner

New maintenance of the 2014.2 versions of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls have been released and are now available for download.

Major new features are described below.  See the announcement posts for the detailed list of enhancements and updates, including many items not listed below:

ProductHeadingGenericEditors

ISO 3166-1 Alpha-3 Codes Added (WPF, WinRT only)

The Country class, which contains ISO country data and is utilized by our CountryComboBox control, now also includes the 3-character alpha code data for each country.

CountryComboBox

This is in addition to the existing data of 2-character alpha code and name.

ProductHeadingGenericPropertyGrid

Handling of Root Objects Improved (WPF only)

We've improved how the PropertyGrid handles properties on the root SelectedObjects that have a custom type converter.

Handling of Immutables Improved (WPF only)

We've also improved support for handling immutable objects and determining how to interact with their properties.

Custom Factory Sample Updated (WPF only)

The Custom Factory sample has been updated to show a property with a non-string type.

PropertyGridCustomFactorySample

This is a great example of showing how to implement a custom data factory and merge properties from various object sources.

ProductHeadingGenericRibbon

Backstage Tab Navigation Improved (WPF only)

We've improved keyboard navigation in the TaskTabControl control, which is generally used within Backstage tabs.

Contextual Tab Layout Refined (WPF only)

The logic for the sizing of contextual tab groups and their tabs always has had some minor issues when resizing the containing window to be thinner.  The issue didn't often manifest itself unless multiple contextual tab groups were displayed.

RibbonContextualTabs

We spent a while tracking these issues down and fixing them so that all layout sizing is now perfect, as seen in the screenshot above.

ProductHeadingGenericSyntaxEditor

Read-Only Regions Added

We've added support for read-only regions of text via the new IReadOnlyRegionTag tag.  This feature has been highly requested by customers, so we're happy to deliver it.

SyntaxEditorReadOnlyRegion

There is a ReadOnlyRegionTag implementation class that supports classification so that read-only regions can be rendered with an alternate background, such as gray in the screenshot above.  A new Read-Only Regions QuickStart that demos the new features is now in the Sample Browser.

Move Selected Lines Up/Down Commands

Another highly-requested set of commands for moving the selected lines up (via Alt+Up) and down (via Alt+Down) have been added.  The SDI Editor demo's menu has been updated to show off the new editor commands.

IntelliPrompt Completion Performance Enhancements

We did a lot of performance profiling related to IntelliPrompt completion lists and we able to make numerous performance enhancements in the areas of item matching and filtering.  These enhancements will really help performance when displaying large completion lists.

Drag and Dropped Text Reselection Option Added (WPF only)

A SyntaxEditor.IsDragDropTextReselectEnabled property has been added that can be set to false to prevent reselection of dropped text.

Data Binding Change Scroll Behavior

Views have been updated so that text changes from a data bound source (such as view model) don't scroll the view back to the first line on each update.

Line Commenter Updated

The line commenter has been updated to improve how line comment and uncomment features affect selection.  The logic that gets activated by the LineBasedLineCommenter.CanCommentEmptyLines property also has been improved.

Bi-Di Text Caret Movement (WPF only)

We've made several improvements to caret movement when editing bi-directional text.

Better Separation of UI/Document Models

All of the event ties between the UI and document models have been changed to use weak events.

.NET Languages Add-on

The ability to resolve references to nested types has been improved.

Web Languages Add-on

A completion item for closing the nearest open ancestor element, if any, has been added.  (WPF only)

SyntaxEditorCloseTagCompletion

Ctrl+Space after an end tag start delimiter will also auto-complete the matching start tag's name.  (WPF only)

We've also improved the editing experience when typing to not affect outlining nodes as much.

ProductHeadingGenericShared

Wave and ZigZag Shapes Added

New primitive shapes have been added that can be used to create some interesting user interface elements in your apps.  The Wave shape renders a wavy line.  The ZigZag shape renders a zig-zag line.

ZigZag2

The Shapes QuickStart has been updated with examples showing usage of the new shapes.

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SyntaxEditor Quote Delimiter Auto-Completion

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Wednesday, October 15, 2014 at 3:18pm

PostBannerSyntaxEditorDevNotes

In today's post I'd like to show off another new feature that was added to SyntaxEditor (WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML platforms) in its 2014.2 version: quote delimiter auto-completion.

Quote Delimiter Auto-Completion

SyntaxEditor already had some great delimiter-related features like delimiter highlighting and delimiter auto-completion for curly braces, square braces, and parentheses.  These have been in the product for a while. 

We had a number of customers also request that support for quote auto-completion be added to assist with working with strings, and that's what's been added.  Quote auto-completion support is now built into the DelimiterAutoCompleter class, with double quote completion enabled by default.  Single quote completion can be activated as well but is not enabled by default since some languages use single quotes as single line comment delimiters.

Let's see it in action!  Here we are using our new Python add-on language to start typing an author designation:

QuoteCompletion1

Next I type a double quote character:

QuoteCompletion2

The end double quote is auto-inserted, but after the caret.  This allows me to type the string content directly in without having to use arrow keys.

QuoteCompletion3

Now that I've typed in the string content, I type the double quote again.  SyntaxEditor knows that it's the quote that was recently auto-completed, so it effectively overwrites the existing quote instead of adding another double quote.  The caret ends up after the string, as expected.

QuoteCompletion4

Summary

The quote delimiter auto-completion features were added in the 2014.2 version of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls.

They also have been pre-configured to automatically work in these premium SyntaxEditor add-on languages: C#, VB, Python, JavaScript, and JSON.  They can easily be added to your own custom languages as well.

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WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML v2014.2 Released

by Avatar Bill Henning (Actipro)
Friday, September 12, 2014 at 8:08am

Major142ReleasesBlogPostBanner

The 2014.4 versions of our WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT/XAML controls have been released and are now available for download.

Major new features are described below.  See the announcement posts for the large detailed list of enhancements and updates, including many items not listed below:

Note that the 2014.2 version of the WinRT/XAML controls came out last month, introducing our Editors controls, but a new maintenance release is available today adding other new features.

ProductHeadingGenericCharts

We've added six new built-in chart palette options, including Retro and Sand:

ChartPalettes

ProductHeadingWPFDocking

Docking/MDI received numerous updates, including a new option for rafting windows to not hide when in scenario where their owner DockSite is hidden, such as if it's nested in tabs itself.  Many updates to focus handling were made, especially in relation to interop controls like WinForms/ActiveX.

ProductHeadingGenericEditors

Updated the Country and Currency classes with the latest ISO data.

WinRT/XAML Only

As announced in recent blog posts, our WinRT/XAML controls now have some really unique and universal (Windows Store / Windows Phone) controls for accepting input of common data types.

ColorEditBoxOpened
See our Edit Boxes Overview for a summary of the controls and some links to additional posts describing their functionality.

ProductHeadingGenericMicroCharts

A new segment chart has been added that allows for visual display of an integer value within a total..

SegmentChartType

This sort of chart is great for use on dashboards, and also as an indicator of steps or progress achieved.

Another new control is the arrow indicator displayed on the left side of the stock chart below.  It's called a trend indicator and alters its UI to reflect whether a numeric value is greater than, the same as, or less than an origin value.

StockChart

Six new built-in chart palettes have been added as well, including IceCream and Melon.

MicroChartPalettes
ProductHeadingWPFPropertyGrid

We've created a new custom property editor sample that shows how to easily add a custom property editor for a certain Type. 

PropertyGridCustomEditor


Double-clicking a property name has been improved such that if the property doesn't support standard values, it will attempt to focus the related editor instead and select all text.

ProductHeadingGenericSyntaxEditor

Quote auto-completion support has been added to the DelimiterAutoCompleter class, with double quote completion enabled by default.  As the user types a start quote, the related end quote will be auto-entered after the caret.  The C#, VB, Python, JavaScript, and JSON languages in our premium add-ons have been updated to support quote auto-completion.  It can easily be added to any custom languages as well.

We've added some nice new features like a ScrollIntoView method that can ensure that a text position is visible within the view, improved caret/selection movement around and delete/backspace of multi-byte characters, and improved backspace to move to the previous tab stop when auto-convert tabs to spaces is active and the caret is before the first non-whitespace character on the line.

.NET Languages Add-on

We've had a lot of requests for showing how to support ASP-style server tags, where the C# within the tags has automated IntelliPrompt.

SyntaxEditorServerTags
We're happy to deliver a new full source sample (seen above) that shows how to harness our .NET Languages Add-on within server tags.

Python Language Add-on

Today's releases contain the first version of our Python Language Add-on, a new premium add-on that supports both v2.x and v3.x syntax.

PythonIntelliPrompt
We'll blog about the language in more detail soon, but you can download and start using it today.

ProductHeadingGenericShared

A new triangle shape can be used in UI such as breadcrumbs, tabs, etc. 

Triangle
This shape can auto-size to its container and supports strokes and fills.

WPF Only

We've added a ZoomLevelToTextFormattingModeConverter class, which can switch from Display to Ideal text formatting mode when the zoom level is increased, thereby keeping text clear in any scenario.

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