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berard1-Visitor
1-Visitor
August 2, 2011
Question

ActiveX Editor Control

  • August 2, 2011
  • 7 replies
  • 1635 views
Has anyone had any luck embedding the ActiveX Editor Control within another
application?

According to PTC support, from 5.4 on, there is an available ActiveX control
that can be used. They even embed it within Arbortext itself as a font
preview (see: lib\dialogs\modifyfont.xml)
<activex disabled="true" height="80"&lt;br"/>id="editor" progid="Arbortext.EditorControl" resize="both" width="385">Dtl?></activex>

Pretty cool to say the least if I can get it to work, since our writers are
very familiar with the way the editor behaves, but are also dependent upon
external tools. Embedding it would allow me to keep the authoring
environment within a separate toolset context.

Given that we are a Seattle company, I've mainly been trying to do this
within a .NET GUI through COM interop, but I'm curious if anyone's tried
this from any other language/platform (C++, Java, etc).

Keith Berard
Milliman Care Guidelines

    7 replies

    C
    ClayHelberg18-Opal
    18-Opal
    August 2, 2011
    Hi Keith-



    We've done a few implementations where the editor ActiveX control is
    embedded in the IE browser using an <object> tag, and driving behavior
    using JScript. There is a trick to really making it work well though.
    The direct ActiveX interface is very restricted. However, you can
    instantiate a separate Epic.Application object that will give you full
    access to the AOM API.



    If you're familiar with programming using ActiveX controls, it should be
    pretty easy to get started--just add the control to your application the
    way you would any other ActiveX control, create an Epic.Application
    object to handle operations beyond the crippled interface the control
    provides, and you should be good to go.



    --Clay



    Clay Helberg

    Senior Consultant

    TerraXML


    C
    ClayHelberg18-Opal
    18-Opal
    August 2, 2011
    And yes, it *is* pretty cool. 🙂



    Clay Helberg

    Senior Consultant

    TerraXML


    B
    berard1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    August 2, 2011
    Clay,

    That's fantastic news. I should start off by saying this is somewhat of an
    intellectual exercise at this point pending what I'm able to get working,
    and how well it works.

    That said, I've done plenty of work with the Application/ACL class
    libraries, both through .NET (via COM bridge) and directly in Java, so I
    pretty much figured that was the way to go as far as interacting with the
    control. I also know that the Java interface was (as of 5.3) WAY faster
    than going through COM, especially when doing iterations over all nodes.

    Our current system consists of Arbortext with some custom XUI to handle
    normal CMS checkout/checkin, as well as some other common authoring tools
    for citation management, etc. Anything outside of this we handle through a
    .NET application to take advantage of more rich UI constructs, so our
    general workflow lifecycle, communications with our library, research APIs,
    etc.

    Since the majority of our authoring is still done in XML, and all of our
    writers are familiar with how Arbortext works, it doesn't make much sense to
    move to something else. However, working with multiple interfaces all the
    time, not to mention different languages on the programming side, is not
    ideal. My thought is that if I can embed the portions of the editor that
    we know and love within the other application, it would allow for better UI
    controls... which sounds somewhat like what you're doing within IE.

    Would you be able to send me a little code snippet of how you're embedding
    within a webpage? I'm not terribly familiar with ActiveX in that way, and
    have tried a couple of class IDs with no real luck:
    <object classid="CLSID:ECDED982-9C55-4E04-8741-00995ACE7F09" id="Arb1"&lt;br"/>width="200" height="200"></object>
    <object classid="CLSID:2F891043-0DB4-11D3-9837-00104B3E04A0" id="Arb2"&lt;br"/>width="200" height="200"></object>

    I get a similar result when I try to put the control into a WinForms/WPF
    frame, presenting a large grey box with nothing in it.

    One last thing... are you able to handle multiple windows in some way? I
    ask because using disconnected code in the past relies on the active window,
    and loses context if more than one instance is running. This might not be
    a problem with the AX control, since I'm guessing you are referencing it by
    ID in the Javascript, but worth mentioning.

    Thanks,
    keith

    C
    ClayHelberg18-Opal
    18-Opal
    August 2, 2011
    Hi Keith-



    Here's the <object> tag we use to embed the editor control in a web
    page:



    <object<br/>
    classid="clsid:3990811F-C23D-448E-B893-54549C334960" height="400"

    id="editor" width="800"
    codebase="Arbortext_Editor_Installer_5.4F000.exe"></object>



    Note that we use the codebase attribute to point to a streamlined
    Arbortext installer created with the Deployment Kit (which you can
    download from PTC's support site). That way users who don't have
    Arbortext installed yet have an easy way to download and install it.
    With the Deployment Kit, you can configure the installer to set up
    everything unique to your environment, e.g. environment variables,
    zipped customizations, license server locations, user preferences, etc.
    Another very slick piece of technology.



    Anyway, some sample code to interact with the control might look
    something like this:



    <script type="text/jscript">

    var resource = "c:\\www\\root\\activex\\demo.xml"

    var app = new ActiveXObject("Epic.Application");

    var doc = null;



    function openFile() {

    win = editor.open(resource);

    winobj = app.Acl.getWindow(win);

    doc = winobj.activeView.document;

    alert("Now viewing " + doc.name);

    }



    function selectTitle() {

    var title = doc.getElementsByTagName("title").item(0);

    var titleoid = title.firstOID;

    app.Acl.eval("oid_select(" + titleoid + ")");

    }

    ....

    </script>



    As for the gray box, that probably means the control is loading OK. It
    doesn't get "populated" with toolbars and such until you actually open a
    document (call the open() method on the control). I get the same thing
    in my web-embedded configuration, until I click the button that loads a
    document. Then I see the full UI in addition to the document. So if you
    haven't done it yet, run your code that gives a gray box and try loading
    a document. That will tell if your control is working or not.



    I haven't done much in the way of handling multiple open documents in
    this environment, so I can't really say for sure what would work for
    that. But I don't think it should be too hard to work out a system that
    keeps multiple window/doc objects distinct so you can make sure you are
    acting on the correct context. (In that case, I suspect you would still
    want to share a single Epic.Application object and control action
    targets using window or doc ID's, but I might be wrong about that. You
    might have to do some experimenting to see what works best.)



    Good luck, and let us know how it goes.



    --Clay



    Clay Helberg

    Senior Consultant

    TerraXML


    B
    berard1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    August 2, 2011
    We only just started using the deployment kit style, but so far so good with
    that.

    Makes sense about not showing anything until open. I have a feeling that's
    what's tripping me up. When I call open within .NET, I get an exception
    (asks to check the HRESULT, but that's null). When I try in IE, it just
    fails.

    Do you recall how you went about getting the classid? I don't have 5.4
    installed (just 6), so I went to Control Panel -> Admin -> Component
    Services, drilled down within DCOM, and got the CLID from properties on the
    "Arbortext Editor" or "ArbortextEditorModule"


    C
    ClayHelberg18-Opal
    18-Opal
    August 2, 2011
    Hi Keith-



    I got the class ID from the documentation. Look at the topic
    "Integrating Arbortext Editor with web pages" for more details.



    --Clay



    Clay Helberg

    Senior Consultant

    TerraXML


    B
    berard1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    August 2, 2011
    *Face-Palm*

    I guess in all of my Deployment Kit testing, I never even though of just
    installing the full package to check samples. Turns out there's actually a
    C# ActiveX embed example in there.

    The "new" Deployment mechanism is great, but not so great if you're the
    developer who needs the whole shebang.

    Live and learn. Thanks again, and I'll keep you posted as to how it all
    goes.

    keith

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