What is a difference between WPTools and TextDynamic.net?

a) Both text components are based on the same "RTF Engine" which was completely recreated for WPTools 5 some years ago. It internally works with a paragraph tree which mimics XML. It can attach properties to a character, to a paragraph and to a paragraph style - often attribute inheritance is possible.

b) Both internally work with text layers, a header or footer text is a text layer, also footnote texts and text boxes which are supported by the "Premium" editions are text layers.

c) WPTools has the ability to attach a document object (TWPRTFDataCollection) to an editor, the same object can be attached to multiople editors for spitscreen. Or you can simulate MDI when you switch the object "on the fly". TextDynamic offers the RTFDataAdd, RTFDataSelect methods which can be used for similar tasks.

Difference between WPTools and TextDynamic

- the API is different, TextDynamic uses a set of interfaces (IWPMemo, IWPTextCursor are the most important). The names are often similar, but TextDynamics system is completely different.

The best is to open http://www.wpcubed.com/manuals/tdref/
and scroll a bit down to the list of Interfaces

- TextDynamic comes in a package with .NET WinForm support and as OCX. The OCX works well with MS Access for example. WPTools is for Delphi / C++Builder VCL only. If you need similar features (and API) for ASP.NET or ASP please wait for RTF2PDF V3.5. It inherts almost all interfaces TextDynamic has. This works well on a virtual web server.

- The events TextDynamic uses are very similar to those of WPTools. So the mail merge works much alike and when you create a table you can access the cell which was created to insert the text. But in all this cases you get a reference to an interface to manipulate the current object (image, field, paragraph) - you dont get a reference to the object itself. So it is not possible to explore the text by code further from a certain start point. To do this you will always have to use the methods provided by the IWPTextCursor interface.

Both components support the same file formats (RTF, WPT, TXT, HTML, UNICODE)

TextDynamic optionally integrates the PDF and SpellCheck support.

TextDynamic also has some features WPTools does not have, such as the integrated label printer, the IWPMime interface and of course the tool -bars and -panels.

Conclusion:
For a developer who is used to WPTools 5 it should be easy to understand how to work with TextDynamic. Mailmerge templates developed with WPTools can be resused but program code cannot.

You can download the TextDynamic demo at
http://www.wpcubed.com/ftp/TextDynamic_Demo.exe

Regards,

Julian Ziersch

TextDynamic info: http://www.wpcubed.com/products/textcontrol/index.htm
Reference: http://www.wpcubed.com/manuals/tdref/
Manual: http://www.wpcubed.com/manuals/textdynamic/