Windows Forms Syntax Editor Overview

24 May 20233 minutes to read

The EditControl is a powerful text editor control to create interactive code editor applications with its unique feature set. It has many efficient features such as editing, syntax highlighting, text indentation, intellisense, expand or collapse a block of code, and custom language configuration as in Microsoft Visual Studio Editor.

Key features

Syntax highlighting - Provides a built-in syntax highlighting and code editing experience in the most-popular languages such as C, C#, Delphi, VB, SQL, XML, HTML, Java, VBScript, JScript, PowerShell, and defined text. It also offers fully configurable syntax highlighting for general text editing purpose.

Custom language support - Supports to user defined language configurations. Custom language configurations can be created easily and applied to the content in the EditControl.

Editing support - Allows end users to modify and edit the text documents and source code files. This includes clipboard support, unlimited undo and redo, drag and drop, block indent and outdent, and so on.

Code outlining: Sections of code from the outlining blocks can be specified using the Configuration Settings. The EditControl defines different brackets for highlighting different languages.

Clipboard operations: Provides keyboard and programmatic support to Cut, Copy, and Paste.

Selection mode: Supports normal selection and rectangular block selection to select lines from specific columns like Microsoft Visual Studio Text Editor.

Change tracking: Provides extensive support to track the changed lines by displaying markers at the beginning of lines after the last file save operation.

Line number: Supports to display line number at the starting position of text.

Indentation support: Supports text indent and outdent options like Microsoft Visual Studio Text Editor.

Word wrap: Supports text wrapping to next line when it exceeds the control bound.

Auto complete: Supports AutoComplete option predict and append the predefined data when user types.

Auto correct: Supports AutoCorrect option that automatically corrects misspellings and common typos.

Fully functional Context menu: Provides a built-in context menu with options to perform editing operations such as Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, and so on. The EditControl also contains options to enable or disable the built-in context menu.

Content dividers: Clearly distinguishes content sections with line dividers similar to Visual Basic to improve code readability.

Intellisense: Provides intellisense pop-up capabilities to add content easily like in Microsoft Visual Studio code editor.

ToolTip: Provides interactive tooltip support, which is built-in and appears automatically when the mouse pointer is placed over the collapsed block of text.

Highlight line: Supports to highlight the line with customizable background color.

Underline: Provides an interactive support to format the text by underlining with various built-in options such as solid, dash, wave, dot lines, and so on.

Text navigation: Provides extensive support for text navigation based on character, word, line, page, or entire document levels.

Bookmark and custom indicators: Supports Microsoft Visual Studio text editor like bookmark and custom indicators.

Search or Replace Dialog: Provides built-in Find and Replace dialog windows to search and highlight the desired text and replace as in Microsoft Visual Studio text editor.

Status bar: Provides built-in status bar at the bottom of the control with different panels to display the essential information. It helps to track line, column number, caret index, and so on.

Shortcut keys: Provides shortcut key support for all editing and navigation operations.

Split view: Provides a view-splitting function to split a single document in the EditControl into several views.

Single line mode: Supports single-line mode that is rendered just like a regular TextBox. This enables you to have a simple TextBox but with all syntax-highlighting, selection, IntelliPrompt, and other features that make SyntaxEditor great for editing code.

File support: Supports all file operations like Create New, Open, and Save.

Globalization and localization: Supports complete localization to any desired language of all the dialogs and pre-defined text associated with it.

Right to left: Supports laying out text in a left-to-right fashion that allows the control to develop forms for worldwide audiences.

Print: Supports Print option to print the loaded contents.

Export: Supports option to export contents in XML, RFT, and HTML formats.

Scrolling: Provides extremely a smooth scrolling behavior even when large files are loaded in the EditControl.