At 06:33 AM 07-07-01 +0000, you wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Would appreciate any help I can get on this: If I want to use the
>TIB_RichEdit control, can it be hooked up to a varchar field or must
>it be a BLOB field? I've hooked it up to a varchar field and no
>matter how I try to save it in RTF format, it's always saved in plain
>text. I've set the PlainText property to false, BTW.

It's a common misconception that a RichEdit component is a richtext editor. This is not the case. The TIB_RichEdit is a custom memo component that recognises standard rich text markup and will properly display it as richtext. Without accessing an editor (home-built or through a richtext editor component or an ole provider such as MS Word) you can't use the RichEdit component to convert plain text to RTF.

An example of how you might use this component is to stream a RTF document into a text blob, store it, and then redisplay it in a TIB_RichEdit.

You can copy and paste; and you can add text; but, without an editor, you won't be able to add any new formatting.

>I would like to know whether BLOBs are necessary, because I have no
>experience with BLOBs and would need to spend some time tinkering
>with it.

IBO's custom memo components *can* handle varchars, so if you can find a way to store RTF-marked-up text in a varchar, TIB_RichText ought to be able to display it correctly. I don't know if it is even possible to save a varchar containing the whole range of non-text characters used for RTF markup...

It's not a great idea to be trying to work with enormous varchars for formatted text, though. Text blobs are much simpler for that, since they are saved and retrieved without regard to the "meaning" of the characters.

Regards,
Helen

All for Open and Open for All
InterBase Developer Initiative · http://www.interbase2000.org
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