Rich Text Record Types

In the C API, rich text (composite data) records are primarily identified by SIG_CD_xxx flags, and the general equivalent to this in JNX is the RecordType enum. This enum maps those SIG_CD_xxx values to named enum values, as “areas” in which they might be found in a DB, and to interface representations in Java.

Though this enum has representations of nearly all CD records, it may not be exhaustive. There are cases where new enum entries may need to be added, either because we did not yet include them from the docs yet or because they are undocumented or new record types.

Areas

The RecordType.Area enum is a JNX-ism that is not directly represented in the C API toolkit. This value is required, though, to account for situations where the same signature value is used for very-different structures depending on the rich text being read. For example, Navigators (“viewmaps” internally) use their own CD structures that can potentially use the same signatures as other records, but will not show up in the same record streams. This aspect is why the getType() method on RichTextRecord returns a Set of potential candidates.

When accessing a rich text stream, such as via doc.getRichTextItem or RichTextUtil.readMemoryRecords, the API user specifies which Area value to use when interpreting the stream, with TYPE_COMPOSITE being the default and by far the most common.

Individual RecordType enum values are bound to these areas via a single integer value or int[] in their constructor definitions. These numbers map to Area values as seen in the RecordType.getRecordTypeForConstant implementation.

Interface Mappings

When a RecordType value does not have an associated implementation interface, then rich-text stream readers will emit GenericBSIGRecord, GenericWSIGRecord, and GenericLSIGRecord instances to provide generic memory access.

To bind an interface to a type, create an interface for it (see rich_text_implementation.md for details) and then add that interface to the enum value constructor. When a stream processor sees this, it will create an instance of that interface (via a Proxy object) and provide that in the stream instead of the generic record type.