Today I'd like to show off a new feature coming to the WPF and Silverlight .NET Languages Add-on:  C# text formatting!

Text formatters beautify code, making it more readable by adjusting whitespace.

C# Text Formatting Example

Let's see an example.  Here is some messy C# code loaded up in SyntaxEditor:

When we format the document, the result is:

That's a lot more readable!  The text formatter also has an option for whether open curly braces appear on the same or next line.

Intelligent Modifications

The best part about this feature is that SyntaxEditor only adjusts ranges it needs to.  It doesn't do a mass replace of the whole document.  For instance on line 7, it does a tweak of the leading whitespace on the line but doesn't touch the rest of the line.

All of the various text change operations involved in the formatting are merged into a single atomic text change that is added as a single undo stack item.  This makes it easy for the end user to quickly undo any formatting changes that were made.

Summary

These features will be in the 2013.1 versions of the WPF and Silverlight SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on.

We just published new maintenance release of both the WPF and Silverlight controls.  These new builds fix a SyntaxEditor problem that we introduced in the previous maintenance release, and also have several other minor SyntaxEditor tweaks and fixes in them.

Update details are described here:

• WPF Controls
• Silverlight Controls

We recommend that you get these latest v2012.2 maintenance releases.

We're working on new features for our 2013.1 control releases and today I'd like to show off a new feature coming to the WPF and Silverlight .NET Languages Add-on in that version.

C# Var Quick Info

As seen in the screenshot below, hovering over var keywords will now show the resolved type.

In this case, the resolved type for the randomNumbers variable is List<int>, which we aliased to Int32List above in the usings.

Visual Basic Dim Quick Info

Similar features have been added for the Dim keyword in VB.

In this screenshot, the j variable is being assigned an Int32.

Summary

These features will be in the 2013.1 versions of the WPF and Silverlight SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on.

Today we just published new maintenance releases of all our control products.  These maintenance releases contain a lot of minor updates and bug fixes.  For more details, see the related announcement post:

• WPF Controls
• Silverlight Controls
• WinRT XAML Controls
• WinForms Controls

We highly recommend that if you are on the latest major versions, you upgrade to these maintenance releases.

Happy Holidays

We want to wish you all a very happy holiday season and new year.  We value our customers and your support for our products.  You allow us to continue doing what we love, and that is crafting great software.  We are excited to bring you more new products and features in 2013.  See you on the flip side!

WPF Studio 2012.2 build 571 has been released and is now available for download. This maintenance release contains some massive new features and updates for the WPF controls.

This build has the following major new features:

• Docking: Updated the standard switcher to use current theme assets and updated dock guide appearances for the Metro themes.
• Docking: Updated dock guides, previews, rafting windows, and the switcher to support LayoutTransform detection.
• Editors: Updated EnumPart to implement ISpinnable and allow up/down arrow keys to change its value.
• PropertyGrid: Added a new Custom Factory QuickStart that shows how to build a custom data factory.
• Ribbon: Completely rearchitected RibbonWindow to use the powerful new WindowChrome class for providing its custom chrome.
• Ribbon: Improved RibbonWindow's Metro themes to support outer glows.
• Ribbon: Improved RibbonWindow to fully support Aero snap and dock.
• Ribbon: Updated Backstage to have a more Office 2013-like appearance when in a Metro theme.
• Ribbon: Updated Backstage so that it covers the RibbonWindow.StatusBar if present.
• SyntaxEditor: Added a NavigableSymbolSelector.AreRootSymbolsSupported property, that can be set to false to only show the member drop-down.
• SyntaxEditor: Added new SyntaxEditor.HorizontalScrollBarVisibilty and VerticalScrollBarVisibility properties that can be set to Hidden to hide scrollbars.
• SyntaxEditor LL(*) Parser Framework: Added a new Grammar.AstLeftAssociativity tree constructor method that can provide left associativity on binary operator expressions.
• SyntaxEditor .NET Languages Add-on: Improved the parser and resolver.
• Themes: Added a new Metro White theme, that is similar to the Office 2013 appearance.
• Themes: Updated WindowChrome to support the rendering of custom chrome for any current theme, not just the Metro themes.
• Themes: Updated WindowChrome to support Aero glass via its new IsGlassEnabled and GlassThickness properties.
• Themes: Added the WindowChrome.TitleBarContentTemplate property that allows for injecting custom content next to window title bar caption buttons.

See the announcement post for the detailed list of enhancements and updates.