Introduction
For one of my projects, I have felt the need of a text editor with syntax highlighting. At first, I used a component inherited from RichTextBox
, but while using it for a large amount of text I found out that RichTextBox
highlights very slowly a large number of colored fragments (from 200 and more). When such highlighting has to be made in a dynamic way, it causes a serious problem.
Therefore I created my own text component which uses neither Windows TextBox
nor RichTextBox
.
The rendering of a text was made completely only by the means of GDI+.
The component works fast enough with a large amount of text and also possesses tools to make comfortably dynamic syntax highlighting.
It has such settings as foreground color, font style, background color which can be adjusted for arbitrarily selected text symbols. One can easily gain access to a text with the use of regular expressions. WordWrap, Find/Replace, Code folding and multilevel Undo/Redo are supported as well.
Implementation
For storage of characters of text, structure Char
is used:
public struct Char
{
public char c;
public StyleIndex style;
}
The structure keeps the symbol (char
, 2 bytes) and style index mask (StyleIndex
, 2 bytes). Thus, on each character of text consumes 4 bytes of memory. Symbols are grouped into lines, which are implemented using List<Char>
.
StyleIndex
is mask of styles indices, applied to this character. Each bit of StyleIndex
means that this symbol will be drawn by appropriate style. Because StyleIndex
has 16 bits, control supports no more than 16 different styles.
Styles are stored in a separate list:
public readonly Style[] Styles = new Style[sizeof(ushort)*8];
In fact, Style
is renderer of chars, backgrounds, borders and other design elements of the text.
Below is a typical implementation of one of the styles for rendering text characters:
public class TextStyle : Style
{
public Brush ForeBrush { get; set; }
public Brush BackgroundBrush { get; set; }
public FontStyle FontStyle { get; set; }
public override void Draw(Graphics gr, Point position, Range range)
{
if (BackgroundBrush != null)
gr.FillRectangle(BackgroundBrush, position.X, position.Y,
(range.End.iChar - range.Start.iChar) *
range.tb.CharWidth, range.tb.CharHeight);
Font f = new Font(range.tb.Font, FontStyle);
Line line = range.tb[range.Start.iLine];
float dx = range.tb.CharWidth;
float y = position.Y - 2f;
float x = position.X - 2f;
Brush foreBrush = this.ForeBrush ?? new SolidBrush(range.tb.ForeColor);
for (int i = range.Start.iChar; i < range.End.iChar; i++)
{
gr.DrawString(line[i].c.ToString(), f, foreBrush, x, y);
x += dx;
}
}
}
TextStyle
contains foreground color, background color and font style of the text. When creating a new style, component checks style on its list, and if there is no style, it creates a new style, with its index.
You can create custom styles, inherited from Style
class.
To work with fragments of text, the class Range
was used, representing a continuous block of text, given the initial and final positions:
public class Range
{
Place start;
Place end;
}
public struct Place
{
int iLine;
int iChar;
}
Using the Code
Syntax highlighting
Unlike RichTextBox
, the component does not use RTF. The information about the color and type of symbols is kept only in the component. It means that the coloring of the component has to be redone every time when entering text. In this case, the event TextChanged
is applied.
A Range
object which contains the information about modified text range pass into the event TextChanged
. It permits the highlighting of the altered text fragment only.
For the search of fragments of text which need to be colored, it is possible to employ overloaded method Range.
SetStyle()
which accepts search pattern (regular expression). For example, the following code can be used for the search and coloring of the comments of C# code (the part of the line starting from two forward slashes):
Style GreenStyle = new TextStyle(Brushes.Green, null, FontStyle.Italic);
...
private void fastColoredTextBox1_TextChanged(object sender, TextChangedEventArgs e)
{
e.ChangedRange.ClearStyle(GreenStyle);
e.ChangedRange.SetStyle(GreenStyle, @"//.*$", RegexOptions.Multiline);
}
Before beginning the coloring call, the method Range.ClearStyle()
is used to clean out and delete the previous style.
The method SetStyle()
highlights the text fragment corresponding to a regular expression. However, if the expression includes the named group "range
", the group with a name "range
" is highlighted. The name of the class which comes after the key words "class
", "struct
" and "enum
" was bolded in the following example:
e.ChangedRange.SetStyle(BoldStyle, @"\b(class|struct|enum)\s+(?<range>[\w_]+?)\b");
The event handler TextChanged
utilized for coloring C#, VB, HTML and other languages syntax was implemented in demo application.
Apart from the event TextChanged
the events TextChanging
, VisibleRangeChanged
and SelectionChanged
may happen to be useful. The event TextChanging
appears before the text starts to be modified. The event SelectionChanged
occurs after the change of the cursor position in the component or while a selected fragment of text is being modified.
Code Folding
Control allows to hide blocks of text. To hide the selected text, use method CollapseBlock()
:
fastColoredTextBox1.CollapseBlock(fastColoredTextBox1.Selection.Start.iLine,
fastColoredTextBox1.Selection.End.iLine);
The result is shown in the picture:
The component supports automatic search for fragments of collapse (folding area). To set the pattern (Regex) to find the beginning and end of folding block, use method Range.SetFoldingMarkers()
in TextChanged
handler.
For example, to search of blocks {..}
and #region .. #endregion
, use next handler:
private void fastColoredTextBox1_TextChanged(object sender, TextChangedEventArgs e)
{
e.ChangedRange.ClearFoldingMarkers();
e.ChangedRange.SetFoldingMarkers("{", "}");
e.ChangedRange.SetFoldingMarkers(@"#region\b", @"#endregion\b");
}
The result is shown in the picture:
Folding blocks can be nested into each other.
Collapsed block can be opened by doubleclick on it, or click on marker '+'. Single click on folded area selects hidden block. Also, you can open hidden block programmatically by ExpandBlock()
method.
Demo application contains sample for collapse all #region...#endregion
blocks of the text.
In addition to hiding the text, folding blocks help visually define the boundaries of the block where the caret is located. For this purpose, the left side of the control draws a vertical line (folding indicator). It shows the beginning and end of the current folding block, in which the caret is located.
Custom Code Folding
Code folding using regex does not always bring the desired result.
For more specific cases - you can directly set the start and end markers blocks: Line.FoldingStartMarker
and Line.FoldingEndMarker
.
Following code example makes folding block for selected range:
const string marker = "myMarker";
var currentSelection = fctb.Selection.Clone();
currentSelection.Normalize();
if (currentSelection.Start.iLine != currentSelection.End.iLine)
{
fctb[currentSelection.Start.iLine].FoldingStartMarker = marker;
fctb[currentSelection.End.iLine].FoldingEndMarker = marker;
fctb.Invalidate();
}
Note:
- FoldingMarker is identifier and has no relation to text content.
FoldingStartMarker
and FoldingEndMarker
must be identical for folding block. - The FCTB supports nested blocks with same FoldingMarker name.
- Also it supports two strategies of finding of blocks, use property
FindEndOfFoldingBlockStrategy
.
More complex example of custom code folding see in CustomFoldingSample
.
Delayed Handlers
Many events (TextChanged
, SelectionChanged
, VisibleRangeChanged
) have a pending version of the event. A deferred event is triggered after a certain time after the occurrence of major events.
What does this mean? If the user enters text quickly, then the TextChanged
is triggered when you enter each character. And event TextChangedDelayed
works only after the user has stopped typing. And only once.
It is useful for lazy highlighting of large text.
Control supports next delayed events: TextChangedDelayed
, SelectionChangedDelayed
, VisibleRangeChangedDelayed
. Properties DelayedEventsInterval
and DelayedTextChangedInterval
contain time of pending.
Export to HTML
Control has property Html
. It returns HTML version of colored text. Also you can use ExportToHTML
class for more flexibility of export to HTML. You can use export to HTML for printing of the text, or for coloring of the code of your web-site.
Clipboard
Control copies the text in two formats - Plain text and HTML.
If the target application supports inserting HTML (e.g. Microsoft Word) then will be inserted colored text. Otherwise (such as Notepad) will be inserted plain text.
Hotkeys
The control supports following hotkeys:
- Left, Right, Up, Down, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown - moves caret
- Shift+(Left, Right, Up, Down, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown) - moves caret with selection
- Ctrl+F, Ctrl+H - shows Find and Replace dialogs
- F3 - find next
- Ctrl+G - shows GoTo dialog
- Ctrl+(C, V, X) - standard clipboard operations
- Ctrl+A - selects all text
- Ctrl+Z, Alt+Backspace, Ctrl+R - Undo/Redo opertions
- Tab, Shift+Tab - increase/decrease left indent of selected range
- Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End - go to first/last char of the text
- Shift+Ctrl+Home, Shift+Ctrl+End - go to first/last char of the text with selection
- Ctrl+Left, Ctrl+Right - go word left/right
- Shift+Ctrl+Left, Shift+Ctrl+Right - go word left/right with selection
- Ctrl+-, Shift+Ctrl+- - backward/forward navigation
- Ctrl+U, Shift+Ctrl+U - converts selected text to upper/lower case
- Ctrl+Shift+C - inserts/removes comment prefix in selected lines
- Ins - switches between Insert Mode and Overwrite Mode
- Ctrl+Backspace, Ctrl+Del - remove word left/right
- Alt+Mouse, Alt+Shift+(Up, Down, Right, Left) - enables column selection mode
- Alt+Up, Alt+Down - moves selected lines up/down
- Shift+Del - removes current line
- Ctrl+B, Ctrl+Shift-B, Ctrl+N, Ctrl+Shift+N - add, removes and navigates to bookmark
- Esc - closes all opened tooltips, menus and hints
- Ctrl+Wheel - zooming
- Ctrl+M, Ctrl+E - start/stop macro recording, executing of macro
- Alt+F [char] - finds nearest [char]
- Ctrl+(Up, Down) - scrolls Up/Down
- Ctrl+(NumpadPlus, NumpadMinus, 0) - zoom in, zoom out, no zoom
- Ctrl+I - forced AutoIndentChars of current line
Note: You can change hotkey mapping. Use Hotkeys
property in design mode and HotkeysMapping
in runtime.
Brackets Highlighting
Control has built-in brackets highlighting. Simply set properties LeftBracket
and RightBracket
. If you want to disable brackets highlighting, set it to '\x0
'. For adjust color of highlighting, use property BracketsStyle
. For adjusting of time of pending of highlighting, change DelayedEventsInterval
.
Interactive Styles
You can create own interactive(clickable) styles. To do this, derive your class from the Style
, and call AddVisualMarker()
from your overridden Draw()
method. To handle a click on the marker, use eventsFastColoredTextBox.VisualMarkerClick
or Style.VisualMarkerClick
or override method Style.OnVisualMarkerClick()
.
Also you can use built-in style ShortcutStyle
. This class draws little clickable rectangle under last char of range.
Styles Priority
Each char
can contain up to 16 different styles. Therefore, the matter in which order these styles will be drawn. To explicitly specify the order of drawing, use the method FastColoredTextBox.AddStyle()
:
fastColoredTextBox1.AddStyle(MyUndermostStyle);
fastColoredTextBox1.AddStyle(MyUpperStyle);
fastColoredTextBox1.AddStyle(MyTopmostStyle);
This methods must be called before any calls of Range.SetStyle()
. Otherwise, the draw order will be determined by the order of calls of methods Range.SetStyle()
.
Note: By default, control draws only one TextStyle
(or inherited) style - undermost from all. However, you can enable the drawing of the symbol in many TextStyle
, using the property FastColoredTextBox.AllowSeveralTextStyleDrawing
. This applies only to TextStyle
(or inherited) styles, other styles(inherited from Style
) are drawn in any case.
If char
has not any TextStyle
, it will drawing by FastColoredTextBox.DefaultStyle
. DefaultStyle
draws over all other styles.
Call method ClearStyleBuffer()
if you need reset order of drawing.
Also, to adjust the look of text, you can apply a semitransparent color in your styles.
Built-in highlighter
FastColoredTextBox
has built-in syntax highlighter for languages: C#, VB, HTML, SQL, PHP, JS, XML, Lua.
Note: You can create own syntax highlighter for any language.
Property HighlightingRangeType
specifies which part of the text will be highlighted as you type (by built-in highlighter). Value ChangedRange
provides better performance. Values VisibleRange
and AllTextRange
- provides a more accurate highlighting (including multiline comments), but with the loss of performance.
Multiline Comments Highlighting
If your custom language supports multiline comments or other multiline operators, you may encounter a problem highlighting such operators. Property ChangedRange
from TextChanged
event contains only changed range of the text. But multiline comments is larger than ChangedRange
, from what follows incorrect highlighting. You can solve this problem in the following way: In TextChanged
handler use VisibleRange
or Range
property of FastColoredTextBox
instead of ChangedRange
. For example:
private void fastColoredTextBox1_TextChanged(object sender, TextChangedEventArgs e)
{
Range range = (sender as FastColoredTextBox).VisibleRange;
range.ClearStyle(GreenStyle);
range.SetStyle(GreenStyle, @"//.*$", RegexOptions.Multiline);
range.SetStyle(GreenStyle, @"(/\*.*?\*/)|(/\*.*)", RegexOptions.Singleline);
range.SetStyle(GreenStyle, @"(/\*.*?\*/)|(.*\*/)", RegexOptions.Singleline |
RegexOptions.RightToLeft);
}
Note: Using VisibleRange
instead of ChangedRange
decreases performance of the control.
Note: If you use built-in highlighter, you can adjust property HighlightingRangeType
.
Using XML Syntax Descriptors
Component can use the XML file for syntax highlighting. File name specified in the property DescriptionFile
.
For highlighting, you need to set the Language
property to Custom
.
The file may contain information about styles, rules of syntax highlighting, folding parameters and brackets.
Below is a list of valid tags and attributes to them:
<doc>...</doc>
- root XML node. <brackets left="..." right="..." left2="..." right2="..." />
- sets the brackets for highlighting <style name="..." color="..." backColor="..." fontStyle="..." />
- sets the style called name. Tag <style>
creates only styles of type TextStyle
. color
and backColor
determine foreground and background color. Allowed as a string
color name or hex representation of the form #RGB or #ARGB. fontStyle
- enumeration of FontStyle
parameters.
The sequence tags <style>
determines the order of rendering these styles. <rule style="..." options="...">regex pattern</rule>
- sets rule of highlighting. style
- style name described in the tags <style>
. options
- enumeration of RegexOptions
parameters. The contents of the tag - regex pattern for highlighting. <folding start="..." finish="..." options="...">
- specifies the rules for folding. start
and finish
set regular expressions to the beginning and end of the block. options
- enumeration of RegexOptions
parameters.
Below is an example XML file for syntax highlighting HTML:
<doc>
<brackets left="<" right=">" />
<style name="Maroon" color="Maroon" fontStyle="Bold,Italic" />
<style name="Blue" color="Blue"/>
<style name="Red" color="Red" backColor="#f5f5e5" />
<rule style="Blue"><|/>|</|></rule>
<rule style="Maroon"><(?<range>[!\w\d]+)</rule>
<rule style="Maroon"></(?<range>[\w\d]+)></rule>
<rule style="Red" options="Multiline">(?<range>\S+?)='[^']*
'|(?<range>\S+)="[^"]*"|(?<range>\S+)=\S+</rule>
<folding start="<div" finish="</div>" options="IgnoreCase"/>
</doc>
Backward/Forward Navigation
Control remembers lines in which the user has visited. You can return to the previous location by pressing [Ctrl + -] or call NavigateBackward()
. Similarly, [Ctrl + Shift + -] and the method NavigateForward()
.
You can also use the property Line.LastVisit
for information on the last visit to this line. In the example PowerfulCSharpEditor
this property is used for navigation in multitab mode, when you have multiple documents open.
Hieroglyphs and Wide Characters
Control supports input and display hieroglyphs and other wide characters (CJK languages, Arabic and other). Also Input Method Editor (IME) is supported.
To enable this feature to switch the property ImeMode
to the state On.
Demo contains a sample of IME features usage.
Note: For a normal display wide characters may require a larger font size.
Note: Enabled IME mode can decrease performance of control.
Autocomplete
The library has class AutocompleteMenu
to implement autocompleting functionality (like IntelliSense popup menu).
AutocompleteMenu
contains a list of AutocompleteItem
. It supports displaying, filtering and inserting of items.
You can use AutocompleteMenu
for code snippets, keywords, methods and properties hints.
Notice to such properties and methods as Fragment
, SearchPattern
, MinFragmentLength
, Items.ImageList
, Items.SetAutocompleteItems()
.
You can override class AutocompleteItem
for more flexibility of functionality.
Also, you can use more advanced control AutocompleteMenu[^]. AutocompleteMenu
is fully compatible with FastColoredTextBox.
See AutocompleteSample
and AutocompleteSample2
for more information.
AutoIndent
When the user is typing, and enabled AutoIndent
, control automatically determines the left indent for the input string.
By default, the indentation made on the markers of Code Folding. But, if you select a specific Language
, then padding makes integrated highlighter for appropriate language.
You can set their own rules for indentation.
Use the event AutoIndentNeeded
.
The handler must return two values: Shift
and ShiftNextLines
.
Shift
value indicates indention of this line relative to the previous line (in characters, can be negative). ShiftNextLines
value indicates a indent will be applied to the subsequent lines after this.
The pictures show some possible variants:
and:
Example of AutoIndentNeeded
handler shown in AutoIndentSample.
Note: If you handle AutoIndentNeeded
event, built-in highlighter's indention will disabled.
Also, you can manually make AutoIndent
of selected text. Simply call DoAutoIndent()
method. The below picture shows text before calling:
And this is picture after DoAutoIndent()
calling:
AutoIndentChars
The control can align the position of the individual characters in adjacent lines. This functionality is called AutoIndentChars.
An example is shown below:
The property AutoIndentCharsPatterns
contains a set of patterns (in each line - one pattern).
When the user types a character, line is checked against each pattern. If the string suitable for some of the patterns are checked near lines (the left indent these lines must match the indentation of the current line). And then these symbols of found lines are aligned by inserting whitespaces. Which symbols will be aligned is defined by named groups of regex, name of group must be "range". See example:
In this example will be aligned symbol "=" and text after its.
To deactivate AutoIndentChars set property AutoIndentChars
to false (by default it is true). Built-in syntax highlighter already contains needed patterns for AutoIndentChars, so you shouldn't to define it.
You can make AutoIndentChars programmatically by method DoAutoIndentChars()
. Also, user can call AutoIndentChars by hotkey Ctrl+I (It will worked even if AutoIndentChars = false).
Custom AutoIndentChars see in example AutoIndentCharsSample
.
Printing
The component has built-in printing functionality. For print all text or selected range, call method Print()
. You can specify which dialog boxes to show, by passing the object PrintDialogSettings
. By default, the method makes printing of all text, without dialog boxes.
Lazy file loading
To work with files of extremally large size (100k lines and more) can be a useful "lazy" mode. In this mode, the control opens the file and reads its parts, as needed. Unused pieces of text are deleted from memory. This mode is supported by three methods:
OpenBindingFile()
- Opens file for reading (in exclusive mode).
CloseBindingFile()
- Closes opened file. After call the control returns to simple (non lazy) mode.
SaveToFile()
- Saves text to the file. After this method, control will be binded to new file. This method can be used in simple (non lazy) mode too.
Split-screen mode
The control has property SourceTextBox
of type FastColoredTextBox
. If you set this property to another textbox, both the controls will display the same text. This mode can be used to split the screen, where you can edit the same text in different places.
Column selection mode
The component supports column selection mode. When its activated, user can work with vertical fragment of the text:
To enable column selection mode, press Alt key and select area by mouse. Another way - press Alt+Shift and select area by arrow keys. To switch off this mode simply click on the control or press any arrow key.
Column selection mode supports text inputting (include Del and Backspace, but exclude insert or delete lines), clipboard operations, clear selection, undo/redo operations.
Arrow keys(Right, Left, Up, Down, etc) switches off column mode.
Also, if you call methods Text{set;}
or AppendText
, column mode switches off. Methods InsertText
and SelectedText
do not change selection mode.
If you want prorgammatically enable/disable selection mode, use property Selection.ColumnSelectionMode
.
Wordwrap mode does not support column selection.
Bookmarks
The control has built-in bookmarks. You can use property Bookmarks
to get access to bookmarks. Also, user can use hot-keys Ctrl-B
, Ctrl-Shift-B
, Ctrl-N
to add, remove and navigate to bookmark.
Note: Bookmarks are working even for virtual modes (lazy loading mode, custom TextSource
, etc)
ToolTips
The component supports tooltips. For this you need to handle event ToolTipNeeded
and pass parameters for tooltip. ToolTipNeeded
is fired when user moves mouse over text. After the mouse is stopped, after ToolTipDelay
ms ToolTipNeeded
will be called and will be showed popup tooltip.
Hints
The component supports built-in hints. This is powerful feature allows you to insert hints into text.
The hint can contain simple text or arbitrary control. The hint is linked to range and move with it when user scrolls textbox. If user presses Esc
or changes text all hints are removing.
Class Hint
has several modes of displaying. Property Dock
allows to place hint on whole line. If property Inline
is True, hint will be built in the text, otherwise the hint will be located over text.
Also you can adjust colors of background, borders, fonts etc. If user clicks on the hint, event HintClick
will be called. To create and show hint use collection Hints
. Also the FastColoredTextBox
has auxiliary methods to add and remove hints: AddHint()
and ClearHints()
.
Call method Hint.DoVisible()
to scroll textbox to the hint.
Macro recording
The FCTB supports recording of macros. When recording is activated, FCTB remembers all pressed keys. Later you can execute recorded sequence.
Macros remember any entered symbols and control keys (include Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Home, End, etc). But macros do not support selection by mouse.
The user can start/stop recording pressed Ctrl-M. For executing macro - Ctrl-E.
For more efficiency of macros introduced the function 'char finding'. Press Alt-F and any char. Entered char will be found in the text, and caret will be placed immediately after found char.
You can get access to the macros infrastructure via property MacrosManager
. There you can control macros programmatically.
WordWrap indenting
Property WordWrapAutoIndent
automatically shifts secondary wordwrap lines on the shift amount of the first line:
Property WordWrapIndent
specifies additional shift for secondary wordwrap lines (in chars):
Properties WordWrapAutoIndent and WordWrapIndent can operate simultaneously. Of course, they are working on WordWrap mode only.
Note: By default, WordWrapAutoIndent is on. If you need classical wordwrapping, switch it off.
Layout and colors
Below shown some layout and color properties:
Compact Framework Version
| The control works under .NET Compact Framework 2.0. This means that you can use it for mobile platforms (PocketPC, Smartphones, PDA etc).
CF version supports all features except the following:
- IME mode and wide characters are not supported.
AutocompleteMenu is not supported. - Built-in printing is not supported.
The remaining features are presented, only slightly different from the full version.
|
Samples
Demo application has many samples. Below is a brief description:
- Powerful sample. Contains many features: syntax highlighting, code folding, export, same words highlighting and other.
- PowerfulCSharpEditor. Powerful multitab C# source files editor. Supports highlighting, multitab backward/forward navigation, dynamic methods list, autocomplete and other.
- Simplest syntax highlighting sample. Shows how to make simplest syntax highlighting.
- Marker sample. Shows how to make marker tool. Sample uses class
ShortcutStyle
for create clickable markers on text area:
-
Custom style sample. This example shows how to create own custom style. Next custom style draws frame around of the words:
class EllipseStyle : Style
{
public override void Draw(Graphics gr, Point position, Range range)
{
Size size = GetSizeOfRange(range);
Rectangle rect = new Rectangle(position, size);
rect.Inflate(2, 2);
var path = GetRoundedRectangle(rect, 7);
gr.DrawPath(Pens.Red, path);
}
}
- VisibleRangeChangedDelayed usage sample. This example shows how to highlight syntax for extremely large text by
VisibleRangeChangedDelayed
event. - Simplest code folding sample. This example shows how to make simplest code folding.
- Custom code folding sample. This example shows how to make costom code folding (on example of Python).
- Autocomplete sample, Autocomplete sample 2. Examples show how to create autocomplete functionality:
- Tooltip sample. It shows tooltips for words under mouse.
- Dynamic highlighting sample. Shows how to make dynamic syntax highlighting. This example finds the functions declared in the program and dynamically highlights all of their entry into the code of LISP.
- Syntax highlighting by XML Description. This example uses XML file for description syntax highlighting.
- IMEmode sample.This example supports IME entering mode and rendering of wide characters.
- Image drawing sample. Sample shows how to draw images instead of text:
This example supports animated GIF too.
- AutoIndent sample. Sample shows how to make custom autoindent functionality.
- BookmarksSample. Sample shows how to make bookmarks functionality.
- Logger sample. It shows how to add text with predefined style:
- Split sample. It shows how to make split-screen mode:
- Lazy loading sample. It shows how to work with files of extremally large size.
- Console sample. It shows how to create console emulator.
- HintSample. It shows how to use hints.
- ReadOnlySample. The example shows how to create readonly blocks of the text.
- MacrosSample. This sample shows how to use macros for hard formatting of the code.
- PredefinedStylesSample. Here we create large readonly text with predefined styles, hyperlinks and tooltips.
- DocumentMapSample. Shows document map feature.
- DiffMergeSample.
- Joke sample. It contains some additional features, implemented custom
TextStyle
:
Performance
For storing one megabyte of text requires approximately 6 MB of RAM (include undo/redo stack objects). The coloring does not consume significant resources.
The use of regular expressions and saving memory usage, allow to reach high performance component. I tested the file of 50,000 lines (about 1.6 MB) of C# code. The total time of insertion, and the syntax coloring was about 3 seconds. Further work with the text passed without significant delays.
Restrictions
The component does not support center or right alignment and uses only monospaced fonts. Also tabs are always replaced by spaces.
History
- 24 Feb 2011 - First release.
- 26 Feb 2011 - Added Find/Replace functionality, indent stuff, showing of line numbers. Also added VB syntax highlighting.
- 28 Feb 2011 - Added code folding functionality (include current block highlighting). Added some features (caret blinking, increase/decrease indent of selected text). Optimized
ReplaceAll
functionality. Added HTML syntax highlighting. Increased general performance of control. - 2 Mar 2011 - Style logic was revised. Added HTML export. Added many samples. Added many features...
- 3 Mar 2011 - Increased performance. Fixed some bugs. Added SQL, PHP syntax highlighting examples. Brackets highlighting is built-in now. Some hotkeys was added.
- 4 Mar 2011 -
FastColoredTextBox
now supports built-in syntax highlighter for languages: C#, VB, HTML, SQL, PHP. - 8 Mar 2011 - Added XML syntax descriptors. Fixed some bugs of font rendering.
- 14 Mar 2011 - Added Backward/Forward navigation. Added IME mode and CJK languages support. Added powerful C# multitab editor sample.
- 25 Mar 2011 - Added following features: colored text copy, auto indent for new line, insert/remove comment prefix for selected lines, uppercase/lowercase transformation of selected text. Fixed scroll flicker. Fixed some bugs. Added image drawing sample.
- 7 Apr 2011 - Added
AutocompleteMenu
class. Autocomplete
sample was revised. Some other features was added. - 15 Apr 2011 -
AutoIndent
was revised. Added printing functionality. - 30 May 2011 - Control was downgraded from FW3.5 to FW2.0.
- 8 Jun 2011 - Added .NET Compact Framework 2.0 version. Added some features. Some bugs was fixed. Performance was increased.
- 18 Jun 2011 - License was changed from GPLv3 to LGPLv3. Now you can use control in proprietary software.
- 29 Jun 2011 - Changed behaviour of AutoIndent, Home key, word selection (Really, I made the PHP editor for myself, and discovered that these functions are inconvenient. Added some methods, events and properties (
LineInserted
, LineRemoved
, Line.UniqueId
). Added BookmarksSample
. Built-in highlighter was improved. Fixed some flicker. - 17 Aug 2011 - Improved support for multiline comments and operators (see property
HighlightingRangeType
). Fixed some bugs. - 6 Jan 2012 - Some bugs was fixed. Autocomplete menu was improved.
- 4 Feb 2012 - Added split-screen mode, lazy file loading, overwrite mode. Performance was increased. Some bugs was fixed.
- 13 Mar 2012 - Added some properties and samples. Some bugs was fixed.
- 30 Apr 2012 - Bugfixing, small changes of keys behaviour, selecting and autoindent.
- 2 May 2012 - Column selection mode was added.
- 26 Sep 2012 - Some bugs was fixed. Changed some key's behaviour. Added printing of line numbers. Added bilingual sample. Added hotkeys for remove current line and move selected lines up/down.
- 03 Nov 2012 - Added properties:
AutoIndentExistingLines
(You can disable autoindenting for existing lines), VirtualSpace
(In VirtualSpace mode user can set cursor into any position of textbox), FindEndOfFoldingBlockStrategy
(You can adjust strategy of code folding). Added line selection mode(When user drags mouse over left margin of textbox, corresponding lines will be selected). Fixed some bugs with scrolling. Added HyperlinkSample
. - 23 Jan 2013 - The control supports built-in Bookmarks, Tooltips and Hints. Event
OnPaste
was added. Fixed bugs with localization and binding to the Text
property. AutocompleteMenu
appearing was improved. Also behaviour of methods IncreaseIndent
and DecreaseIndent
was improved. Now you can change color scheme of built-in syntax highlighter (see properties KeywordStyle
, StringStyle
, etc.). Useful method GetStylesOfChar()
was added. SQL highlighting was extended. Some samples was improved. Sample HintSample
was added. Drag&drop is available now. - 14 Feb 2013 - The control supports readonly blocks, zooming. Samples
ReadOnlyBlocksSample
and PredefinedStylesSample
were added. Source codes of the component are available on GitHub now. - 26 Feb 2013 - Macros are supported now,
MacrosSample
was added. Implemented features: border around text area, char finding. Indenting was improved. Scrolling by mouse was improved. - 03 Mar 2013 - Added hotkey mapping. Now you can change hotkeys of FTCB. Also zooming and scrolling were improved.
- 07 Nov 2013 - Document map was added. Many features were improved.
- 13 Dec 2013 - DiffMerge sample was added. Intergation with Irony example was added.
- 23 Dec 2013 - Properties
WordWrapAutoIndent
and WordWrapIndent
were added. Custom wordwrap mode was added (see sample CustomWordWrappingSample
). Custom outside scrollbars are supported now (see CustomScrollBarSample
). - 29 Mar 2014 - Brackets autocomplete was added. Added method
OpenFile
with autodetecting of file encoding. - 12 Jul 2014 -
AutoIndentChars
functionality was added (details see in article). AutoIndentCharsSample
was added. Built-in highlighter supports Lua
and XML
now. - 25 Oct 2014 - Nuget package was added.
I am Pavеl Tоrgаshоv, and I live in Kyiv, Ukraine.
I've been developing software since 1998.
Main activities: processing of large volumes of data, statistics, computer vision and graphics.