Text Editor Widget

The Common Desktop Environment text editing system consists of two components:

• The text editor application, dtpad, which provides editing services through graphical, action, and ToolTalk interfaces

• The editor widget, DtEditor, which provides a programmatic interface for the following editing services:

  • Cut and paste

  • Search and replace

  • Simple formatting

  • Spell checking (for 8-bit locales)

  • Undo previous edit

  • Enhanced I/O handling capabilities that support input and output of ASCII text, multibyte text, and buffers of data

  • Support for reading and writing files directly

Although the Motif text widget also provides a programmatic interface, applications that want to assure a system-wide uniform editor should use the DtEditor widget. The Common Desktop Environment Text Editor and Mailer use the editor widget. Use this widget in the following circumstances:

• You need the functionality, such as spell checking, undo, and find/change, that is provided by the DtEditor widget.

• You want users to be able to read and write data to and from a file.

• When your program does not need to edit the text while the widget has control of the text.

Library and Header Files

The DtEditor widget is in the libDtWidget library. The header file is Dt/Editor.h.

Demo Programs

A demo containing an example of the DtEditor widget (editor.c) is in /usr/dt/examples/dtwidget directory. Read the README file for detailed information on the demo.

Related Documentation

For more information on the Text Editor widget, see the relevant man pages and theSolaris Common Desktop Environment: Programmer's Guide.