Getting Started with WPF SyntaxEditor

This tutorial will walk you through the creation of a sample application that contains a RadSyntaxEditor control.

Adding Telerik Assemblies Using NuGet

To use RadSyntaxEditor when working with NuGet packages, install the Telerik.Windows.Controls.SyntaxEditor.for.Wpf.Xaml package. The package name may vary slightly based on the Telerik dlls set - Xaml or NoXaml

Read more about NuGet installation in the Installing UI for WPF from NuGet Package article.

With the 2025 Q1 release, the Telerik UI for WPF has a new licensing mechanism. You can learn more about it here.

Adding Assembly References Manually

If you are not using NuGet packages, you can add a reference to the following assemblies:

• Telerik.Licensing.Runtime
• Telerik.Windows.Controls
• Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input
• Telerik.Windows.Controls.SyntaxEditor
• Telerik.Windows.SyntaxEditor.Core

You can find the required assemblies for each control from the suite in the Controls Dependencies help article.

Defining RadSyntaxEditor

Example 1 demonstrates how you can define a RadSyntaxEditor in XAML.

Example 1: Defining RadSyntaxEditor

<telerik:RadSyntaxEditor x:Name="syntaxEditor" /> 

Figure 1: Empty RadSyntaxEditor

Opening a File

To load a file in the RadSyntaxEditor you need to use its Document property.

Example 2: Opening a File

public MainWindow() 
{ 
    InitializeComponent(); 
 
    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader("../../CS_File.txt")) 
    { 
        this.syntaxEditor.Document = new TextDocument(reader); 
    } 
} 

Figure 2: RadSyntaxEditor with a loaded C# file

Enable Syntax Highlighting

Once you have loaded the code, you need to register an appropriate tagger to enable syntax highlighting for the particular language.

Example 3: Enable C# code highlighting

var cSharptagger = new CSharpTagger(this.syntaxEditor); 
this.syntaxEditor.TaggersRegistry.RegisterTagger(cSharptagger); 

Figure 3: RadSyntaxEditor with C# code highlighting

Setting a Theme

The controls from our suite support different themes. You can see how to apply a theme different than the default one in the Setting a Theme help article.

Changing the theme using implicit styles will affect all controls that have styles defined in the merged resource dictionaries. This is applicable only for the controls in the scope in which the resources are merged.

To change the theme, you can follow the steps below:

• Choose between the themes and add reference to the corresponding theme assembly (ex: Telerik.Windows.Themes.Windows8.dll). You can see the different themes applied in the Theming examples from our WPF Controls Examples application.

• Merge the ResourceDictionaries with the namespace required for the controls that you are using from the theme assembly. For the RadSyntaxEditor, you will need to merge the following resources:

  • Telerik.Windows.Controls
  • Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input
  • Telerik.Windows.Controls.SyntaxEditor
  • Telerik.Windows.SyntaxEditor.Core

Example 3 demonstrates how to merge the ResourceDictionaries so that they are applied globally for the entire application.

Example 3: Merge the ResourceDictionaries

<Application.Resources> 
    <ResourceDictionary> 
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> 
            <ResourceDictionary Source="/Telerik.Windows.Themes.Windows8;component/Themes/System.Windows.xaml"/> 
            <ResourceDictionary Source="/Telerik.Windows.Themes.Windows8;component/Themes/Telerik.Windows.Controls.xaml"/> 
            <ResourceDictionary Source="/Telerik.Windows.Themes.Windows8;component/Themes/Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input.xaml"/> 
            <ResourceDictionary Source="/Telerik.Windows.Themes.Windows8;component/Themes/Telerik.Windows.Controls.SyntaxEditor.xaml"/> 
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> 
    </ResourceDictionary> 
</Application.Resources> 

Alternatively, you can use the theme of the control via the StyleManager.

Figure 3 shows a RadSyntaxEditor with the Windows8 theme applied.

Figure 3: RadSyntaxEditor with the Windows8 theme

Telerik UI for WPF Learning Resources

• Telerik UI for WPF SyntaxEditor Component
• Getting Started with Telerik UI for WPF Components
• Telerik UI for WPF Installation
• Telerik UI for WPF and WinForms Integration
• Telerik UI for WPF Visual Studio Templates
• Setting a Theme with Telerik UI for WPF
• Telerik UI for WPF Virtual Classroom (Training Courses for Registered Users)
• Telerik UI for WPF License Agreement

See Also

• Visual Structure