Flex Text Control Undo

Question

I'm having trouble finding any resource for adding ctrl-z undo capability to a Flex RichTextEditor control (a lack it apparently shares with other Flex text controls). I'm baffled that it's not in the native forms because it's such a fundamental capability, available in even standard browser text controls I believe.

Any mention of this issue on the Flex sites (there are several) conflict; one says the issue is "Closed" and the resolution is "External" (whatever that means).

Does anyone have any insight to offer? I've got an app the heavily requires extensive text editing. Flex in general works nicely, but this trivial lack is just about fatal, as anyone would imagine.

Answer 1

I've read elsewhere -- in fact, in the answers to one of my questions on SO -- that the issue is not going to be resolved in Flex 3. Which seems to be correct since we are in 3.2 or maybe even beyond that, and there's no undo in sight.

I was brave/stupid enough to implement an undo-redo in this component myself. At that time I was working on Windows. Now I'm on OSX and I realize just how non-cross-platform my solution is. The very statement of the problem (adding ctrl-z undo capability) is a large part of the problem (OSX has control AND this Apple key thing). Now I have to check how much work it would be to make the thing cross-platform... could be trivial.

By amazing coincidence, just today I've been thinking about NOT using the RichTextEditor but rather something external (FckEditor comes to mind) because the RTE leaves so much to be desired (hence I arrived at your question). I've worked with the RTE a ton and gotten it to do a lot of what I want, but I still wonder why they didn't "finish" this component...

Answer 2

An example using the Flight Framework to easily implement undo/redo can be found here: http://www.xtyler.com/code/163

Answer 3

Flex 3 controls do not natively support undo/redo. Here are a couple of libraries that may be of interest to you:

• flexundoredo
• as3undohistory