Creating an image in C# then laying out on page - c#

I need to take a spreadsheet and convert it into a price tag. I've done that part but I'm not to sure how to go about making an image that contains both the price an item name (This is all stored in a list.) Then lay it out on a 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper.
I read this question here but its using the size of the text, which may vary depending on the name of the item. The TextBox (Or whatever is holding the text) needs to be the same size but have the text scale based on its size.

Take a look at these docs, in particular their example pd_PrintPage function. This takes a PrintPageEventArgs which contains a Graphics object that you can use to actually render your tag.
In particular, to leverage your linked question, there is a DrawImage(Image, Int32, Int32) method that renders the given image at a co-ordinate.
To handle scaling your text, you just need to compare how big your text would be with one font to how big you want it - work out the ratio of width/height, then scale the font you use to render so that it uses the smallest of those ratios. There's a good answer here which shows how to do that.
So:
Handle a print event
Find the right font size
Create your image
Print with your graphics object
I would do a mockup of the resulting code, but I don't have access to a C# IDE at the moment.

Related

c#, check area of pdf

I need to enter a text to existing pdf (in top or bottom of the page) in c#.
I need to make sure that I dont overwrite any visible text or image.
Is there any way I could check an area in pdf if it contains text, image, control etc? I understand it will not be 100% accurate
You're going to need a full PDF consumer at the very least, because the only way to find out where the marks are on the page is to parse (and possibly render) the PDF.
There are complications which you haven't covered (possibly they have not occurred to you); what do you consider to be the area of the PDF file ? The MediaBox ? CropBox, TrimBox, ArtBox, BleedBox ? What if the PDF file contains, for example, a rectangular fill with white which covers the page ? What about a /Separation space called /White ? is that white (it generally gets rendered that way on the output) or not ? And yes, this is a widely used ink in the T-shirt printing industry amongst others.
To me the simplest solution would seem to be to use a tool which will give you the BoundingBox of marks on the page. I know the Ghostscript bbox device can do this, I imagine there are other tools which can do so. But note (for Ghostscript at least); if there are any marks in white (whatever the colour space), these are considered as marking the page and will be counted into the bbox.
The same tool ought to be able to give the size of the various Boxes in the PDF file (you'd need the pdf_info.ps program for Ghostscript to get this, currently). You can then quickly calculate which areas are unmarked.
But 'unmarked' isn't the same things as 'white'. If you want to not count areas which are painted in 'white' then the problem becomes greater. You really need to render the content and then look at each image sample in the output to see if its white or not, recording the maxima and minima of the x and y co-ordinates to determine the 'non-white' area of the page.
This is because there are complications like transfer functions, transparency blending, colour management, and image masking, any or all of which might cause an area which is marked with a non-white colour to be rendered white (a transparency SMask for example) or an area marked with white to be rendered non-white (eg a transfer function).
Your question is unclear because you haven't defined whether any of these issues are important to you, and how you want to treat them.

What type of image filtering/processing do mobile PDF scanners use to convert a captured image into a monochrome/black and white image?

I am trying to implement my own monochrome/black and white filter in C# to scan text documents. My approach is to apply a threshold filter on the captured image. However, I often run into the problem that the varying brightness on the image causes a ''shadowing effect'' on the processed image. Refer to the link below (it is pretty blurry but it should suffice). The image to the far left is the original image. When I apply my threshold filter, I get the same result as the image in the middle; some of the text becomes unreadable because the brightness of the image varies, so some portions become really black or really white. However, with the right filter, you can obtain the processed image to the right where everything looks crystal clear.
https://www.google.dk/search?q=monochrome+image+processing&espv=2&biw=1706&bih=859&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir8vXlhIzPAhUFiywKHeSBC1wQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=4UTzoIpyqTkwrM%3A
I would like to know what the process is to obtain the image to the far right. Another example can be seen in the image below. It shows a sample mobile PDF scanner in use. Scanning the image results in a very nice black and white image, where the text can be easily read and no ''shadowing'' occurs on the image. Does anyone know what this process is or what it is called? It is very often used in mobile PDF scanning applications. Thank you in advance.
EDIT: The filter is called ''Adaptive Thresholding''. You can use the BradleyLocalThresholding class to implement the filter, or you can write it yourself (which is what I did). Please refer to my response to the comment by Yves Daoust down below.
You need two ingredients.
One is "background reconstruction", i.e. retrieving the intensity of the white sheet "under the characters", for instance by morphological opening.
The other is "shading correction", i.e. compensating the unevenness of the background illumination by comparing to the reconstructed background, for instance by subtraction.
This will "flatten" the image, making it perfectly amenable to global thresholding.
A simple method is to convert the image to grayscale and then convert it to B/W using an error diffusion algorithm such as Floyd–Steinberg dithering.

Measure size of unicode string to calculate row height [duplicate]

Calling TextRenderer.MeasureText as follows:
TextRenderer.MeasureText(myControl.Text, myControl.Font);
and comparing the result to the size of the control to check if text fits. The results are sometimes incorrect. Have observed the following two issues:
Often when a Label is set to AutoSize, TextRenderer will report a width that is 1 pixel wider than the auto-sized width of the Control.
False negative where TextRenderer reports a width smaller than the control's but the text is still cut off. This occurred with "Estación de trabajo" -- not sure if the accent could somehow affect the width calculation?
Is there any way to improve the accuracy of the MeasureText method? Should I be calling one of the overrides that accepts a device context and/or format flags?
I know it's probably no actual anymore. Yet for future readers here is a simple yet accurate method of measuring text in a control:
Graphics g=Graphics.FromHwnd(YOUR CONTROL HERE.Handle);
SizeF s=g.MeasureString("YOUR STRING HERE", Font, NULL, NULL, STRING LENGTH HERE, 1)
Is there any way to improve the accuracy of the MeasureText method? Should I be calling one of the overrides that accepts a device context and/or format flags?
You have answered your question by yourself. Actually MeasureText based on Win32 DrawTextEx, and this function cannot work without valid device context. So when you call MeasureText override without hdc, it internally create desktop compatible hdc to do measurement.
Of course measurement depends on additional TextFormatFlags. Also keep in mind that Label painting (and measurement) depends on UseCompatibleTextRendering.
So general conclusion you should use MeasureText for your own code, for example when you then call DrawText with exactly same parameters, in all other cases size returned by MeasureText cannot be treated as precise.
If you need to get expected Label size, you should use GetPreferredSize method.
Check out the TextFormatFlags parameter to this function:
TextRenderer::MeasureText(String, Font, Size, TextFormatFlags)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8wafk2kt.aspx
"The Size, in pixels, of text drawn on a single line with the specified font. You can manipulate how the text is drawn by using one of the DrawText overloads that takes a TextFormatFlags parameter. For example, the default behavior of the TextRenderer is to add padding to the bounding rectangle of the drawn text to accommodate overhanging glyphs. If you need to draw a line of text without these extra spaces you should use the versions of DrawText and MeasureText that take a Size and TextFormatFlags parameter. For an example, see MeasureText(IDeviceContext, String, Font, Size, TextFormatFlags)."
hth
I don't know if I have a perfect solution but I ran into this when I was doing WinForms a few years back. The way I ended up compensating was by adjusting the returned measurement by a percentage. I cannot recall what I used (maybe 5% or 105?), but I do recall that I ended up using a constant percentage across the app and always rounded up.
I haven't got enough points to comment yet, so I've had to put this as an answer:
Perhaps ClearType affects measurement accuracy, because although a character has a known width calculated from its glyph, its rendering and position are adjusted to place axial lines on whole pixels.
Just a thought.

Measure the height of DrawHTMLText before drawing on document with Debenu Quick PDF Lib

I am using latest version of Debenu Quick PDF Library.
Is it possible to calculate the height of DrawHTMLText before drawing it on document?
I need it because, I want my application to decide where (x,y coordinates) to draw DrawHTMLText according to its dimensions.
For example if it exceeds document border from the bottom side I want it to pull it up to make it fit.
Thank you.
user3253797,
You can use the GetHTMLTextHeight function to determine the height before calling DrawHTMLText.
http://www.debenu.com/docs/pdf_library_reference/GetHTMLTextHeight.php
Note : DrawHTMLText will return any overflow text as a string that will not fit into the specified area. GetHTMLTextHeight should in theory return the text height for the text that can fit inside the box. If the text is too long to fit inside the one box then it sounds like you will need to modify the x,y positions and possibly the HTML text itself to make it all fit on one page.
Good luck.
Andrew.

How do you draw a string to a Bitmap in Silverlight?

In normal C# it is easy to draw to a bitmap using the Grpahics.DrawString() method. Silverlight seems to have done away with Bitmap objects and Graphics is no longer available either. So...How am I meant to manipulate/create a bitmap when using Silverlight? If it helps, I am using Silverlight 3.
Let me tell you what I am doing. I am being given a template, basically a pre-rendered image. The user is then able to select from multiple images and enter the deisred text. I then render it to the image, adjusting size etc... within bounds and centering it in the pre-defined area of the image. If I can calculate the size (as in the MeasureString method) and then draw the string (as in the Graphics.DrawString method) that would be fine. The real question, no matter why I want to be able to do this, is can it be done?
The question is: why do you want to? Why not just use a TextBlock?
If you are trying to dynamically generate an image, use standard Silverlight/WPF controls (including TextBlock) and render them to a WritableBitmap.
Edit:
Ok, you've updated and expanded, which gives me more to go on. Unfortunately, you're not going to like the answer. First, keep in mind that Silverlight and WPF in general are vector based, and intended to be used as such. Although the Canvas allows you to do pseudo-pixel manipulations, you cannot be nearly as pixel-accurate as old-school GDI. This is a factor of your medium. If you absolutely have to measure things the way you want to measure them, I suggest you build your images on a remote server and transmit them to your Silverlight app.
You can calculate the size on-screen of the text rendered via a TextBlock using the ActualWidth and ActualHeight properties. But it only works on an already rendered control. Something like MeasureString is simply not available in Silverlight. Based on your description of your app, some user interaction could accomplish what you want. The user selects the image, enters the text, and is shown a preview. The user can then adjust the width and height of the various text areas until satisfied, at which point you can take a snapshot using the render method I liked to above.
The following may work, its a bit nebulous because I haven't tried yet myself.
The object you are looking for is the WritableBitmap.
You create a Visual tree, for example create your self a Grid or Canvas (you're not adding this to the UI). Add to it the selected image and a TextBlock positioned and sized as you prefer.
Create a new WritableBitmap either of a specific size or using the selected image to initialize it.
Use the WritableBitmap Render method passing the above root Grid or Canvas to it.
Now you have a bitmap which you should able to use to do whatever its you needed to do that required all this hoop jumping in the first place.

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