I need to store significant amounts of rich text in a SQL database, retrieve it and display it.
One font throughout is OK but I need different font sizes/bold/colors.
For now I am using a RichTextBox (WPF) to display it, and XamlWriter.Save/XamlReader.Parse to serialize it to strings to store in the DB. It works well but the RichTextBox is so HUGELY SLOW at displaying the text that it's basically unusable.
Is there a quick way to do this with acceptable performance?
I'm considering doing it with GlyphRun objects, drawing each character as a bitmap and computing all the alignment requirements to fit the destination image etc... But reinventing the wheel on simple colored/sizable text seems really strange in 2011.
EDIT:
Thanks for the answers, didn't see them until now, sorry.
Text is entered by the user from RichTextBoxes as well, basically I just save the resulting string XamlWriter.Save(richTextBox.Document) in the database. Other fields (double/int etc) are also entered by the user from TextBoxes.
As the user queries the database, pages of read-only rich text with colors and formatting is generated from scratch using the fields in the database, including the saved rich text fields above: these are converted from FlowDocuments to Spans and some replacement is done on them (InlineUIContainers which host a class derived from UIElement which references a database entry, inlined in the text, like "see [thisbook]" where [thisbook] references some database entry's ID). MSDN says all that is far too much text for a TextBlock.
That text rendering is the really slow part but there is no way around it, I need that formatting and it's just how the WPF RichTextBoxes are: even when entering a little simple text in the RichTextBoxes, there is a delay between typing and the character appearing on the screen...
For now I still use RichTextBoxes but I keep lots of rendered layouts in memory (the Paragraph/Section/Span objects) and I am careful to rerender only the least amount of formatted text possible when changes/queries are made or different views of the database data are requested by the user.
It's still not fast but it's OK, changing the whole structure (AvalonEdit or FormattedText or GlyphRun) doesn't seem worth it right now, too much work, the whole serialization API with XamlWriter.Save and XamlReader.Parse simplifies much (for FormattedText and GlyphRun, I'd have to come up with a file format myself to save the formatted text to the database).
There is also the possibility of using the OpenXML SDK to create Microsoft Word .docx documents but google says rendering performance isn't great either, and I don't know if embedding an UIElement in the text within an InlineUIContainer and serializing that to be saved in the database would be possible (same problem with AvalonEdit).
Consider throwing away RichTextBox because it is so HUGELY SLOW (spot on). Instead of writing your own text editor check AvalonEdit. Performance wise it beats RichTextBox like a baby.
Or if you need read-only text you could try a TextBlock - it supports simple formatting:
<TextBlock>
<Run FontWeight="Bold">Hello</Run>
<Run Foreground="Green">World</Run>
<Run FontSize="24">!</Run>
</TextBlock>
Related
I would like to design one xml text editor which is based on normal text-box which implements all XML characteristics(i.e., it should implement intelligence to differentiate the text colors by node_name,attribute_name,attribute_value and it should check proper closing the tag).
Can any one give me the idea how I could process the each and every character entered by the user(normally we can call the TextBox1_TextChanged event after fully entered the text in text-box but I need to call this event each and every character entry)? I am good in C#, so that I have decided to transform the control to coding page because I already did one editor using console application which read the input character from the user and change the text color.
I might be wrong to approach this problem like this way so, give your suggestions, valuable reference links and ideas to accomplish this editor.
If you know any plugins to do this task please inform me
Thanks in Advance.
Regards,
--SJ
Use a Rich Text Box and handle the KeyDown event for character processing.
Rich Text Box will allow you to do syntax highlighting, text formatting, etc.
I would also validate entered xml for correctness and possibly highlight incorrect syntax to the user if validation fails.
All this is going to required effort, i am not aware of any QUICK solution. But using the basics i've suggested here, you could achieve what you require if you put in the effort.
The EditArea appears to have the features (and more) that you are looking for.
You could also check the list of Javascript base source code editors
at the moment I'm trying to get into Windows Store App Development and I'm stuck at some point.
I want to implement sort of a "markdown language" like the one on stackoverflow to highlight certain parts of text input.
Besides that I want to give the user the ability to use different font colors on his text.
The RichEditBox seems to be the ideal control for this task, but I don't know how to detect markup entering on the fly.
For example when the user enters **Test** the text should be transformed to Test immediately.
I have tried to approach this by listening to the "TextChanged" event and looking if the user enters **. If this is the case and if he entered the sequence ** already one time before, then I'm setting the character format of the text range from the end of the first annotation sequence (start marker) to the beginning of the second (close marker) annotation to bold.
But this solutions seems to be very quick and dirty.
My second thought was to use the WebView control to render the text after preprocessing it with "Markdown Sharp".
But then the user won't be able to edit text.
So I need to get some advice or tip on approaching this problem. I also looked into writing a custom RichEditBox control, but I have no experience in custom control development and there aren't that many resources on the web for Windows 8 development for now.
Thanks in advance.
As I see it, your problem is that you want to edit the "source" based on Markdown syntax AND show the formatted result in the same place. How would you revert Test to regular, as long as the asterisks are gone? If the answer is "using a button" then why not use the button to make it bold in first place?
However, you could do a hybrid thing: apply formatting in the source text, while maintaining the Markdown markup (not sure if this is entirely doable for all Markdown tricks, though). That is, **Test** would look in the source like **Test**. For the final, formatted result you would use a separate view, such as RichTextBlock.
In order to do the hybrid formatting, an option would be to have a background thread matching regularly the whole text against regular expressions specific to the Markdown syntax. For each match the corresponding text range would then be formatted accordingly.
I need control in winforms that can add tens lines per second. I use now richtextbox, but i'm looking for something with sorting possibility (according some datatime or int)
Lines which are added are just custom objects complex of several int and datetime.
Delay aspect is quite important here.
EDIT:
It can be also some table/grid, but I suppose it take too much time (searching existing lines and inserting new line into appropriate place)
RichTextBox will typically offer more overhead in managing, searching, and inserting.
Much more appropriate would be a control like ListView. It gives simpler control over sorting, scrolling, and more.
Additionally, ListView has the ability to handle Virtual data backing. If performance or content size is an issue, this will let you only worry about the sub-set currently displayed in the ListView "view" window.
Two options
Use RichTextBox as you are doing now hold the data in a structure like SortedList from which the control will be updated.
Or, you can use a Grid, format the look and feel of the grid to remove the row & column grid lines and each new line will get appended this way you can let user sort by clicking on the header...
As for adding say ten lines per second I am pretty certain both these controls can handle more traffic than that....
I'm trying to learn WPF and was thinking about creating a simple IRC client. The most complicated part is to create the chat log. I want it to look more or less like the one in mIRC:
or irssi:
The important parts are that the text should be selectable, lines should wrap and it should be able to handle quite large logs.
The alternatives that I can come up with are:
StackPanel inside a ScrollViewer where each line is a row
ListView, since that seems more suitable for dynamic content/data binding.
Create an own control that does the rendering on its own.
Is there any WPF guru out there that has some ideas on which direction to take and where to start?
I suggest you start with a good object model independent of the UI, and then try a multi-line TextBox or a RichTextBox.
Whether these will suffice will depend on exactly how long you want the log to be able to get. If you run into performance issues, you may need to look at virtualization.
First of all, you should consider if you want to select only entire row (like in a listbox), or if you want to select certain characters from a row (like in a textbox).
In the first case, I think a ListView or even a ListBox should be enough, both of them support virtualization when bound to collection and there should be no problem with huge amounts of data. A stack panel inside a ScrollViewer is a little bit like reinventing the wheel for this case and creating a new control is not a very inspired approach in my opinion (as the functionality you want can be achieved with the existing controls, in WPF).
In the second case, if you want to select some text inside of a line, or if you want word wrapping for your longest lines in the log and want to select individual parts of the wrapped lines, then you need to use a control more oriented on displaying text. Kent already suggested a RichTextBox, I would add AvalonEdit control or even the WebBrowser control in which you directly modify its HTMLDocument.
I would suggest to use RichTextBox too, and store items in a log file or database, if you run into performance issues.
Another solution is to use the WPF WebBrowser control and modifiy its HTML content with:
webBrowser.NavigateToString("<HTML><H2><B>This page comes using String</B><P></P></H2></HTML>");
More information about using WebBrowser control
I want my users to be able to enter text in a Rich Text box and the RTF output be saved to the database.
Currently I have the RichTextBox bound to the field in the database, but it strips formatting when it's saved. How can I prevent this?
Also, how can I attach a formatting toolbox, (like what's in Wordpad) so my users can change the formatting?
And, last, I can't right click in the box or use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V or anything like that, why is that? How can I fix it?
Ok, there are alot of questions there, I'll try to answer what I can.
1) Databinding is great for displaying data, but I personally NEVER use DataBinding for saving stuff back to the database. I've always found it to be "too much magic happening" and that I needed more control. Therefore, I would strongly suggest that you handle the insertion yourself (via LINQ to Sql or ADO.Net whatever). The RichTextBox control has an RTF property which you can get to do the insert manually into the database.
2) As for getting formatting buttons on top, it's not as simple as changing a property and be done with it. You'll have to implement that custom control yourself. Have a look at this CodeProject article. IT's in VB.NET, but maybe it'll give you some ideas: http://www.vbdotnetheaven.com/UploadFile/scottlysle/WordProcessor09122006234320PM/WordProcessor.aspx
3) Not quite sure...
For number 3, isn't there a property on the RichTextBox that enables the Context menu? I might've seen this on a different control but maybe it also has that property.