Qt Reference Documentation

QML TextEdit Element

The TextEdit item displays multiple lines of editable formatted text. More...

Inherits Item

  • List of all members, including inherited members
  • Properties

    Methods

    Detailed Description

    The TextEdit item displays a block of editable, formatted text.

    It can display both plain and rich text. For example:

     TextEdit {
         width: 240
         text: "<b>Hello</b> <i>World!</i>"
         font.family: "Helvetica"
         font.pointSize: 20
         color: "blue"
         focus: true
     }

    Setting focus to true enables the TextEdit item to receive keyboard focus.

    Note that the TextEdit does not implement scrolling, following the cursor, or other behaviors specific to a look-and-feel. For example, to add flickable scrolling that follows the cursor:

     Flickable {
         id: flick
    
         width: 300; height: 200;
         contentWidth: edit.paintedWidth
         contentHeight: edit.paintedHeight
         clip: true
    
         function ensureVisible(r)
         {
             if (contentX >= r.x)
                 contentX = r.x;
             else if (contentX+width <= r.x+r.width)
                 contentX = r.x+r.width-width;
             if (contentY >= r.y)
                 contentY = r.y;
             else if (contentY+height <= r.y+r.height)
                 contentY = r.y+r.height-height;
         }
    
         TextEdit {
             id: edit
             width: flick.width
             height: flick.height
             focus: true
             wrapMode: TextEdit.Wrap
             onCursorRectangleChanged: flick.ensureVisible(cursorRectangle)
         }
     }

    A particular look-and-feel might use smooth scrolling (eg. using SmoothedFollow), might have a visible scrollbar, or a scrollbar that fades in to show location, etc.

    Clipboard support is provided by the cut(), copy(), and paste() functions, and the selection can be handled in a traditional "mouse" mechanism by setting selectByMouse, or handled completely from QML by manipulating selectionStart and selectionEnd, or using selectAll() or selectWord().

    You can translate between cursor positions (characters from the start of the document) and pixel points using positionAt() and positionToRectangle().

    See also Text, TextInput, and Text Selection example.

    Property Documentation

    activeFocusOnPress : bool

    Whether the TextEdit should gain active focus on a mouse press. By default this is set to true.


    color : color

    The text color.

     // green text using hexadecimal notation
     TextEdit { color: "#00FF00"; ...  }
    
     // steelblue text using SVG color name
     TextEdit { color: "steelblue"; ...  }

    cursorDelegate : Component

    The delegate for the cursor in the TextEdit.

    If you set a cursorDelegate for a TextEdit, this delegate will be used for drawing the cursor instead of the standard cursor. An instance of the delegate will be created and managed by the text edit when a cursor is needed, and the x and y properties of delegate instance will be set so as to be one pixel before the top left of the current character.

    Note that the root item of the delegate component must be a QDeclarativeItem or QDeclarativeItem derived item.


    cursorPosition : int

    The position of the cursor in the TextEdit.


    read-onlycursorRectangle : rectangle

    The rectangle where the text cursor is rendered within the text edit. Read-only.


    cursorVisible : bool

    If true the text edit shows a cursor.

    This property is set and unset when the text edit gets active focus, but it can also be set directly (useful, for example, if a KeyProxy might forward keys to it).


    font.bold : bool

    Sets whether the font weight is bold.


    font.capitalization : enumeration

    Sets the capitalization for the text.

    • Font.MixedCase - This is the normal text rendering option where no capitalization change is applied.
    • Font.AllUppercase - This alters the text to be rendered in all uppercase type.
    • Font.AllLowercase - This alters the text to be rendered in all lowercase type.
    • Font.SmallCaps - This alters the text to be rendered in small-caps type.
    • Font.Capitalize - This alters the text to be rendered with the first character of each word as an uppercase character.
     TextEdit { text: "Hello"; font.capitalization: Font.AllLowercase }

    font.family : string

    Sets the family name of the font.

    The family name is case insensitive and may optionally include a foundry name, e.g. "Helvetica [Cronyx]". If the family is available from more than one foundry and the foundry isn't specified, an arbitrary foundry is chosen. If the family isn't available a family will be set using the font matching algorithm.


    font.italic : bool

    Sets whether the font has an italic style.


    font.letterSpacing : real

    Sets the letter spacing for the font.

    Letter spacing changes the default spacing between individual letters in the font. A positive value increases the letter spacing by the corresponding pixels; a negative value decreases the spacing.


    font.pixelSize : int

    Sets the font size in pixels.

    Using this function makes the font device dependent. Use TextEdit::font.pointSize to set the size of the font in a device independent manner.


    font.pointSize : real

    Sets the font size in points. The point size must be greater than zero.


    font.strikeout : bool

    Sets whether the font has a strikeout style.


    font.underline : bool

    Sets whether the text is underlined.


    font.weight : enumeration

    Sets the font's weight.

    The weight can be one of:

    • Font.Light
    • Font.Normal - the default
    • Font.DemiBold
    • Font.Bold
    • Font.Black
     TextEdit { text: "Hello"; font.weight: Font.DemiBold }

    font.wordSpacing : real

    Sets the word spacing for the font.

    Word spacing changes the default spacing between individual words. A positive value increases the word spacing by a corresponding amount of pixels, while a negative value decreases the inter-word spacing accordingly.


    horizontalAlignment : enumeration

    verticalAlignment : enumeration

    Sets the horizontal and vertical alignment of the text within the TextEdit item's width and height. By default, the text is top-left aligned.

    Valid values for horizontalAlignment are:

    Valid values for verticalAlignment are:


    read-onlypaintedHeight : real

    Returns the height of the text, including the height past the height that is covered if the text does not fit within the set height.


    read-onlypaintedWidth : real

    Returns the width of the text, including the width past the width which is covered due to insufficient wrapping if wrapMode is set.


    persistentSelection : bool

    Whether the TextEdit should keep the selection visible when it loses active focus to another item in the scene. By default this is set to true;


    readOnly : bool

    Whether the user an interact with the TextEdit item. If this property is set to true the text cannot be edited by user interaction.

    By default this property is false.


    selectByMouse : bool

    Defaults to false.

    If true, the user can use the mouse to select text in some platform-specific way. Note that for some platforms this may not be an appropriate interaction (eg. may conflict with how the text needs to behave inside a Flickable.


    read-onlyselectedText : string

    This read-only property provides the text currently selected in the text edit.

    It is equivalent to the following snippet, but is faster and easier to use.

     //myTextEdit is the id of the TextEdit
     myTextEdit.text.toString().substring(myTextEdit.selectionStart,
             myTextEdit.selectionEnd);

    selectedTextColor : color

    The selected text color, used in selections.


    selectionColor : color

    The text highlight color, used behind selections.


    read-onlyselectionEnd : int

    The cursor position after the last character in the current selection.

    This property is read-only. To change the selection, use select(start,end), selectAll(), or selectWord().

    See also selectionStart, cursorPosition, and selectedText.


    read-onlyselectionStart : int

    The cursor position before the first character in the current selection.

    This property is read-only. To change the selection, use select(start,end), selectAll(), or selectWord().

    See also selectionEnd, cursorPosition, and selectedText.


    smooth : bool

    This property holds whether the text is smoothly scaled or transformed.

    Smooth filtering gives better visual quality, but is slower. If the item is displayed at its natural size, this property has no visual or performance effect.

    Note: Generally scaling artifacts are only visible if the item is stationary on the screen. A common pattern when animating an item is to disable smooth filtering at the beginning of the animation and reenable it at the conclusion.


    text : string

    The text to display. If the text format is AutoText the text edit will automatically determine whether the text should be treated as rich text. This determination is made using Qt::mightBeRichText().


    textFormat : enumeration

    The way the text property should be displayed.

    The default is TextEdit.AutoText. If the text format is TextEdit.AutoText the text edit will automatically determine whether the text should be treated as rich text. This determination is made using Qt::mightBeRichText().

     Column {
         TextEdit {
             font.pointSize: 24
             text: "<b>Hello</b> <i>World!</i>"
         }
         TextEdit {
             font.pointSize: 24
             textFormat: TextEdit.RichText
             text: "<b>Hello</b> <i>World!</i>"
         }
         TextEdit {
             font.pointSize: 24
             textFormat: TextEdit.PlainText
             text: "<b>Hello</b> <i>World!</i>"
         }
     }


    wrapMode : enumeration

    Set this property to wrap the text to the TextEdit item's width. The text will only wrap if an explicit width has been set.

    • TextEdit.NoWrap - no wrapping will be performed. If the text contains insufficient newlines, then implicitWidth will exceed a set width.
    • TextEdit.WordWrap - wrapping is done on word boundaries only. If a word is too long, implicitWidth will exceed a set width.
    • TextEdit.WrapAnywhere - wrapping is done at any point on a line, even if it occurs in the middle of a word.
    • TextEdit.Wrap - if possible, wrapping occurs at a word boundary; otherwise it will occur at the appropriate point on the line, even in the middle of a word.

    The default is TextEdit.NoWrap. If you set a width, consider using TextEdit.Wrap.


    Method Documentation

    void TextEdit::closeSoftwareInputPanel ()

    Closes a software input panel like a virtual keyboard shown on the screen, useful for customizing when you want the input keyboard to be shown and hidden in your application.

    By default the opening of input panels follows the platform style. On Symbian^1 and Symbian^3 -based devices the panels are opened by clicking TextEdit. On other platforms the panels are automatically opened when TextEdit element gains active focus. Input panels are always closed if no editor has active focus.

    You can disable the automatic behavior by setting the property activeFocusOnPress to false and use functions openSoftwareInputPanel() and closeSoftwareInputPanel() to implement the behavior you want.

    Only relevant on platforms, which provide virtual keyboards.

     import Qt 4.7
     TextEdit {
         id: textEdit
         text: "Hello world!"
         activeFocusOnPress: false
         MouseArea {
             anchors.fill: parent
             onClicked: {
                 if (!textEdit.activeFocus) {
                     textEdit.forceActiveFocus();
                     textEdit.openSoftwareInputPanel();
                 } else {
                     textEdit.focus = false;
                 }
             }
             onPressAndHold: textEdit.closeSoftwareInputPanel();
         }
     }

    TextEdit::copy ()

    Copies the currently selected text to the system clipboard.


    TextEdit::cut ()

    Moves the currently selected text to the system clipboard.


    int TextEdit::moveCursorSelection ( int pos )

    Moves the cursor to position and updates the selection accordingly. (To only move the cursor, set the cursorPosition property.)

    When this method is called it additionally sets either the selectionStart or the selectionEnd (whichever was at the previous cursor position) to the specified position. This allows you to easily extend and contract the selected text range.

    For example, take this sequence of calls:

     cursorPosition = 5
     moveCursorSelection(9)
     moveCursorSelection(7)

    This moves the cursor to position 5, extend the selection end from 5 to 9 and then retract the selection end from 9 to 7, leaving the text from position 5 to 7 selected (the 6th and 7th characters).


    void TextEdit::openSoftwareInputPanel ()

    Opens software input panels like virtual keyboards for typing, useful for customizing when you want the input keyboard to be shown and hidden in your application.

    By default the opening of input panels follows the platform style. On Symbian^1 and Symbian^3 -based devices the panels are opened by clicking TextEdit. On other platforms the panels are automatically opened when TextEdit element gains active focus. Input panels are always closed if no editor has active focus.

    You can disable the automatic behavior by setting the property activeFocusOnPress to false and use functions openSoftwareInputPanel() and closeSoftwareInputPanel() to implement the behavior you want.

    Only relevant on platforms, which provide virtual keyboards.

     import Qt 4.7
     TextEdit {
         id: textEdit
         text: "Hello world!"
         activeFocusOnPress: false
         MouseArea {
             anchors.fill: parent
             onClicked: {
                 if (!textEdit.activeFocus) {
                     textEdit.forceActiveFocus();
                     textEdit.openSoftwareInputPanel();
                 } else {
                     textEdit.focus = false;
                 }
             }
             onPressAndHold: textEdit.closeSoftwareInputPanel();
         }
     }

    TextEdit::paste ()

    Replaces the currently selected text by the contents of the system clipboard.


    int TextEdit::positionAt ( int x, int y )

    Returns the text position closest to pixel position (x, y).

    Position 0 is before the first character, position 1 is after the first character but before the second, and so on until position text.length, which is after all characters.


    rectangle TextEdit::positionToRectangle ( position )

    Returns the rectangle at the given position in the text. The x, y, and height properties correspond to the cursor that would describe that position.


    void TextEdit::select ( int start, int end )

    Causes the text from start to end to be selected.

    If either start or end is out of range, the selection is not changed.

    After calling this, selectionStart will become the lesser and selectionEnd will become the greater (regardless of the order passed to this method).

    See also selectionStart and selectionEnd.


    void TextEdit::selectAll ()

    Causes all text to be selected.


    void TextEdit::selectWord ()

    Causes the word closest to the current cursor position to be selected.


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