Uncover why devaxpress WinForms, an interface control, discards the popular maskbox property

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Released by the official technical team v20.2 In the version cycle , Announced the availability of advanced text editor mode , Advanced text editor mode introduces many influential functions , Including caret / Choose animation support and embedded text labels . The future plan was detailed in the announcement at that time , And the official technical team will set it to the default editor mode after all reported problems are solved , Although this has not been set as the default mode , But the latest WXI The skin It is a big step towards this goal .

When WXI When the skin is activated , All text editors will switch to this advanced mode . In this regard , Colored text selection may be a clue , But it is certainly not the only reason for switching . In the new WXI In the skin , The editor uses additional background elements corresponding to different editor States , More elements mean additional client areas and boundary calculations 、 Increased boundary and content rendering logic and overall complexity . Solving these challenges in standard mode will produce side effects and artifacts , Therefore, the technical team decided to use the power of advanced mode to solve these problems .

stay WXI The skin The use of advanced patterns in has triggered around legacy code （ Designed for legacy 、 Code written in non Advanced Editor Mode ） Internal discussion of compatibility , Of course, the most concerned is MaskBox  attribute . This property allows you to get standard WinForms Text box control （DevExpress WinForms TextEdit The foundation of the editor ）, But in advanced mode TextEdits Is a complete custom control and is no longer based on Standards TextBoxes, Of these editors MaskBox Property returns null（ stay VB.NET Empty in middle ）.

The technical team shared many support center issues , To find the need to pass MaskBox Property to access the actual use case of the standard text box . According to research , Most of these cases fall into two main categories ： Automatic completion and text processing （ Include custom input masks ）.

Text auto complete

Now you can use this machine TextEditor API Use autocomplete , To introduce autocomplete , Please set up Editor.AdvancedModeOptions.AutoCompleteSource Property to specify whether the editor recommends entries from your custom data source or auto populate the source （ Recent projects 、 In the history list URL、 System file and folder names, etc ）. You need to specify the appropriate mode （Suggest、Append、 A combination of the two or SuggestSingleWord）, And assign custom data sources （ If you choose CustomSource Autocomplete mode ）.

using DevExpress.XtraEditors;

void OnFormLoad(object sender, EventArgs e) {
var DaysOfTheWeek = new AutoCompleteStringCollection();
DaysOfTheWeek.AddRange(new string[]
{"Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"});

textEdit1.Properties.UseAdvancedMode = DevExpress.Utils.DefaultBoolean.True;
textEdit1.Properties.AdvancedModeOptions.AutoCompleteMode =
TextEditAutoCompleteMode.SuggestAppend;
textEdit1.Properties.AdvancedModeOptions.AutoCompleteSource =
AutoCompleteSource.CustomSource;
textEdit1.Properties.AdvancedModeOptions.AutoCompleteCustomSource = DaysOfTheWeek;
}

Mask and text processing API

In the previous release cycle , We introduced a series of methods to help get and modify editor text ：

• GetCharFromPosition(System.Drawing.Point)
• GetCharIndexFromPosition(System.Drawing.Point)
• GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(System.Int32)
• And others （ see also here Of TextEdit A complete list of methods ）

These methods and Standards TextBox In the same way , for example TextBoxBase.GetCharFromPosition(Point). If you retrieve criteria TextBox To use its methods , Now you can use this machine TextEdit API To get the same result .

As for the low-level input mask , We recently added EnableCustomMaskTextInput Method , This method allows you to manually track user actions and assign editor values as needed .

for example , If you need to limit the number of bytes entered by the user , Previous versions required you to use rewritten TextEdit.CreateMaskBoxInstance Method to implement custom TextEdit Progeny , This method accepts customization TextBoxMaskBox object . then , This custom class will handle user input .

Use EnableCustomMaskTextInput Method , You no longer need any inheritance logic , Just check the byte length directly in the allocated callback .

using DevExpress.Data.Mask;

int m_maxByteLength = 5;

textEdit1.Properties.EnableCustomMaskTextInput(args => {
// Do nothing if no edits were made
if (args.IsCanceled || args.ActionType == CustomTextMaskInputAction.Init)
return;

if (GetByteLength(args.ResultEditText) > m_maxByteLength) {
args.Cancel();
return;
}
args.SetResult(
args.ResultEditText, args.ResultCursorPosition, args.ResultSelectionAnchor);
});

int GetByteLength(string text) {
return System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(text).Length;
}

MaskBox Abandoning

To make a long story short , We updated TextEdit API It allows you to solve the problem that you need to use MaskBox All popular usage scenarios for attributes . This means that this attribute can now be discarded , But this attribute is not completely deleted , Invalidate your existing code . contrary , We now think that all are related to MaskBox Relevant scenes are out of date , And we suggest using our native editor API.

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