Question

I need to append text to RichTextBox, and need to perform it without making text box scroll or lose current text selection, is it possible?

Answer 1

The RichTextBox in WinForms is quite flicker happy when you play around with the text and select-text methods.

I have a standard replacement to turn off the painting and scrolling with the following code:

class RichTextBoxEx: RichTextBox
{
  [DllImport("user32.dll")]
  static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 wMsg, Int32 wParam, ref Point lParam);

  [DllImport("user32.dll")]
  static extern IntPtr SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 wMsg, Int32 wParam, IntPtr lParam);

  const int WM_USER = 0x400;
  const int WM_SETREDRAW = 0x000B;
  const int EM_GETEVENTMASK = WM_USER + 59;
  const int EM_SETEVENTMASK = WM_USER + 69;
  const int EM_GETSCROLLPOS = WM_USER + 221;
  const int EM_SETSCROLLPOS = WM_USER + 222;

  Point _ScrollPoint;
  bool _Painting = true;
  IntPtr _EventMask;
  int _SuspendIndex = 0;
  int _SuspendLength = 0;

  public void SuspendPainting()
  {
    if (_Painting)
    {
      _SuspendIndex = this.SelectionStart;
      _SuspendLength = this.SelectionLength;
      SendMessage(this.Handle, EM_GETSCROLLPOS, 0, ref _ScrollPoint);
      SendMessage(this.Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, 0, IntPtr.Zero);
      _EventMask = SendMessage(this.Handle, EM_GETEVENTMASK, 0, IntPtr.Zero);
      _Painting = false;
    }
  }

  public void ResumePainting()
  {
    if (!_Painting)
    {
      this.Select(_SuspendIndex, _SuspendLength);
      SendMessage(this.Handle, EM_SETSCROLLPOS, 0, ref _ScrollPoint);
      SendMessage(this.Handle, EM_SETEVENTMASK, 0, _EventMask);
      SendMessage(this.Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, 1, IntPtr.Zero);
      _Painting = true;
      this.Invalidate();
    }
  }
}

and then from my form, I can happily have a flicker-free richtextbox control:

richTextBoxEx1.SuspendPainting();
richTextBoxEx1.AppendText("Hey!");
richTextBoxEx1.ResumePainting();