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Paragraph and Tabs Dialogs

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Overview

The Paragraph dialog enables users to format paragraphs (change the alignment of text and spacing between lines, specify paragraph indents, etc.).

Users can click the Paragraph group’s dialog box launcher on the Home ribbon tab to invoke this dialog. Refer to the How to: Create the RichEditControl with a Ribbon UI for details on how to provide the Ribbon UI for the RichEditControl.

RichEdit_ShowParagraphDialog_RibbonCaptionButton

The Paragraph dialog is also available from the context menu.

RTEParagraphContextMenu

The dialog consists of the following tabs:

Indents and Spacing

RTEParagraphMenu

Options under this tab allow users to change the text alignment, define spacing between lines and specify paragraph indents.

The following API allows you to specify the Indents and Spacing options in code:

API Description
ParagraphPropertiesBase.Alignment Gets or sets the paragraph’s text alignment.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.OutlineLevel Gets or sets the paragraph’s outline level.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.RightToLeft Specifies the paragraph’s text direction.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.LeftIndent Gets or sets a paragraph’s left indent.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.RightIndent Gets or sets the paragraph’s right indent.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.FirstLineIndentType Gets or sets how a paragraph’s first line is indented.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.FirstLineIndent Gets or sets a value specifying the indent of the first line of a paragraph.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.SpacingBefore Gets or sets the spacing before the current paragraph.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.SpacingAfter Gets or sets the spacing after a paragraph.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.LineSpacingType Gets or sets the spacing type between a paragraph’s lines.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.LineSpacing Gets or sets a line spacing value.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.ContextualSpacing Gets or sets whether to suppress addition of additional space (contextual spacing) between paragraphs of the same style.

Line and Page Breaks

XtraRichEdit_ParagraphAndTabsDialog_2

You can use this tab to specify pagination options. The table below lists API used to specify Line and Page Breaks options:

API Description
ParagraphPropertiesBase.WidowOrphanControl Gets or sets whether to apply control over the widow and orphan lines.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.KeepWithNext Gets or sets whether to put a break between the current paragraph and the next paragraph.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.KeepLinesTogether Gets or sets whether to prevent all page breaks that interrupt a paragraph.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.PageBreakBefore Gets or sets whether to insert a page break before specified paragraph(s).
ParagraphPropertiesBase.SuppressLineNumbers Gets or sets whether to display line numbers for the paragraphs.
ParagraphPropertiesBase.SuppressHyphenation Gets or sets whether to hyphenate a paragraph.

Tabs

From the Paragraph dialog, end-users can invoke the Tabs dialog allowing them to set the tab stops and their characteristics.

TabsForm

Use the ParagraphPropertiesWithTabs.BeginUpdateTabs and ParagraphPropertiesWithTabs.EndUpdateTabs paired methods to modify tab stops in a particular paragraph.

Invoke the Dialog in Code

Execute the ShowParagraphFormCommand and ShowTabsFormCommand commands to invoke the Paragraph and Tabs dialogs.

Tip

Refer to the How to: Change Formatting of the Current Paragraph document to get an example on how to modify paragraph formatting in code.

Handle the RichEditControl.ParagraphFormShowing or RichEditControl.TabsFormShowing event to customize the default Paragraph or Tabs dialog (modify captions, set default dialog values, implement custom validation, etc.) or substitute it with completely new dialog. Refer to the How to: Customize the Search Form or How to: Customize the Hyperlink Form document for an example.