TRichView 23 - Lazarus for Linux

[Sergey Tkachenko]

We have released TRichView 23 and updates of related components

This update is free for customers who ordered/renewed TRichView (ScaleRichView, ReportWorkshop) in 2023 and 2024.

Main changes in this version (made after the last update):

• support of Linux platform in Lazarus
• saving and loading equation objects in DocX and HTML
• improved dark mode
• support of "Windows 64-bit (modern)" platform in C++Builder 12

A reminder of other changes made after version 22:

• new cross-platform spell-checking component and platform service
• dark mode option
• using text color from FireMonkey style
• high-quality drawing of metafiles (in VCL version)

The complete list of changes: https://www.trichview.com/help/index.ht ... on_23.html

A trial version can be download here: https://www.trichview.com/download/

Previous version
https://www.trichview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13002

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Setup

Changes in Setup

In the trial version
Support of RAD Studio 12 Community Edition is added. Support of RAD Studio 11 Community Edition is removed.

In the full version
New supported platform: Windows 64-bit modern
("Windows 64-bit modern" was not added to the trial setup to prevent unnecessary growth in size; all features can be tested on the classic Windows 64-bit platform).
The new platform is supported only in the recommended Delphi+CBuilder installation mode (which installs DPK packages). CBuilder-only installation mode (which installs CBPROJ packages) still supports only Windows 32-bit platform.

Compatibility

1. For RAD Studio 11. The trial requires RAD Studio 11.3 and cannot be installed in older 11.x versions. The full version does not have this limitation.

2. For RAD Studio 12. The trial can be installed RAD Studio 12.0, 12.1 and 12.2 + October 2024's patch (and in new version of 12.x when they will be released). It cannot be installed in an unpatched RAD Studio 12.2. The full version does not have this limitation.

The trial version was compiled using RAD Studio 12.2 (with the patch applied). As a result, it does not include support for the Linux platform in RAD Studio 12, since this version lacks FMXLinux. However, users of the full versions of TRichView and ReportWorkshop, in combination with RAD Studio 12, can enable Linux platform support by downgrading to RAD Studio 12.1.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Lazarus for Linux

This update introduces support for the new platform: Lazarus for Linux.
TRichView supports two types of Linux canvases: GTK2 (the default widgetset for Lazarus on Linux) and the Cairo canvas (used for printing).
The update has been tested on Lazarus 3.6.

trichview-lazarus-for-linux.jpg (233.79 KiB) Viewed 11859 times

The following components are ported:

• all the components from TRichView package
• RichViewXML
• RvHtmlImporter (although, this is an obsolete component, please use TRichView HTML loading methods instead).

Like for FireMonkey, the Lazarus version of TRVSpellChecker component uses HunSpell on Linux.

Right to left languages are supported.

Will be ported to Lazarus for Linux soon:

• RichViewActions
• ASpell component (or, probably, TRVSpellChecker will support both HunSpell and ASpell)
• VirtualTree integration

Limitations

The Linux version has fewer features compared to the Windows version.
Similar to the FireMonkey version, it does not support the following:

• Advanced character attributes (e.g., character spacing, horizontal character scaling)
• Distributed paragraph alignment (justification by increasing character spacing; only word-spacing-based justification is supported)
• Image animations

I plan to implement animations for both the FireMonkey and Lazarus for Linux versions in one of the upcoming winter updates.

Additionally, the Lazarus for Linux version lacks support for:

• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Table cell rotations

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Equation object in DocX and HTML

TRichView and ScaleRichView documents support equation objects, allowing the inclusion of mathematical expressions powered by the Adit Math Engine (AME).
TRichView supports two versions of AME:

• A free version, distributed exclusively with TRichView
• A commercial version, available at https://www.aditmath.com/

Prior to this update, TRichView did not utilize any advanced features of the commercial version of the Adit Math Engine (AME), apart from supporting a broader range of mathematical expressions.

In this version, TRichView leverages the OMML and MathML features of the commercial AME to save and load equations in DOCX and HTML files.

The free version of AME does not support OMML and MathML. As a result, it cannot load equations from HTML or DOCX files, and equations are saved as images in these formats when using the free version.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Improvements in dark mode

A dark mode was introduced in the previous update of TRichView and ScaleRichView.
In this mode, the lightness of all document colors is inverted (light colors become dark, and dark colors become light).

However, some colors were previously unaffected, such as table grid lines and other colors used to display invisible objects or assist with editing. In TRichView version 23, the dark mode feature is now complete.

For equation objects, dark mode adjusts the main text color.
In TRichView version 23, when using the commercial version of AME, dark mode also applies to colors defined for parts of mathematical expressions. Due to this enhancement, TRichView v23 can use only the latest commercial version of AME.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

This update includes various optimizations and fixes, primarily focused on handling erroneous HTML files.

For ScaleRichView and ReportWorkshop, this is a minor update.
In ScaleRichView, there are no new features aside from updates to support changes in TRichView and support of "Windows 64-bit Modern" platform.
In ReportWorkshop, the processing of rich text fields has been optimized, making them significantly more efficient.

New features for these components will be introduced in future updates.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

Changes in the demo projects

VCL demos

A spelling checker has been added to the "Editors\Editor 2" demo for TRichView (all versions of this demo for Delphi and C++Builder).
A spelling checker has also been added to the "RVDemos\Editors\Editor 2" demo for ScaleRichView.

While VCL users can utilize the spelling-checking UI provided by RichViewActions, these demos show how to implement spelling checking without relying on the actions.

Lazarus demos

All demo projects have been updated for Linux compatibility.
Changes include fixing case-sensitive file names, replacing '\'' with PathDelim, and adding the cthreads unit to all projects.
The cthreads unit is necessary on Linux because TRichView uses threads for background spelling checking.
A spelling checker has been added to the "Editors\Editor 2" demo as well.

[Sergey Tkachenko]

TRichView 23.0.1

TRichView has been updated to version 23.0.1.

In addition to fixes, this release allows the use of VCL/Lazarus image format detection when TRichView's own image format detection fails.
VCL image format detection is available for Delphi 10.2 and later.

This feature is useful in the following cases:

• The image format is not recognized by TRichView (TRichView recognizes all formats included in Delphi and Skia4Delphi, but third-party classes may implement additional formats).
• The image format is recognized by TRichView, but the graphic class required for loading it is not accessible (e.g., Skia4Delphi's TskImage). This is particularly relevant for WebP and WDP images, which are supported via TskImage.

This functionality is especially important when loading RVF and DocX files containing images in these formats.