I'd like to add labels to my Word document, specifically in the margin. I've seen that things like date pickers and combo boxes can be added to the document, but I can't see anything for what I'm after.
I can get the ControlCollection object via:
Globals.Factory.GetVstoObject(myApplication.ActiveDocument).Controls
but there are no methods for adding labels.
Are there any alternative methods for adding labels to a document using VSTO?
[EDIT]
So I managed to insert WinForm labels, however it is extremely slow, as is confirmed in this post:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/277090/adding-winform-controls-to-a-vsto-word-document-is-extremely-slow
So I'm still looking for alternatives. I cannot find any label-like ContentControls as suggested in the thread above.
So the solution that I settled on was to use Word shapes. The snippet of code below shows how to add a label shape to your document.
Shape shape =
doc.Shapes.AddLabel(Office.MsoTextOrientation.msoTextOrientationHorizontal,
left,
top,
width,
height,
range);
The process of adding multiple labels is by no means lightning fast, but is significantly faster than adding the winform controls to the document. Shapes give you the flexibility to place it wherever you want on the page too, which is something that ContentControls do not offer.
Related
I've got a massive UI that I'm designing. The way that my employer wants it, there are at least 100 labels. Now, I've always thought that in cases like this, breaking up the UI into smaller custom controls was the ideal way to go. However, someone recently told me that custom controls are really only for code re-use. What is the actual suggested practice for this?
EDIT
The finished form will look like this:
Now, I'm using WPF for the UI, and I'm thinking of breaking this down into smaller bits.
Based on your image i see some repetitions, each of this repetitions could be a custom UserControl
But it depends on the usability is it easier to write a custom UserControl so do it but if it would reduce the readability of your code and it also adds additional complexity don't do it
here are an example of what could be separate UserControl's
the green ones are possible useful encapsulations of logic
the orange ones maybe need some not market stuff (don't know enough about your software)
the red ones are the maybe's based on the intern use (from the visual part they are repetitions so the should custom UserControl)
Since your UI is read-only, I'd suggest using a grid.
Are you new to WPF? To break the View into bits WPF offers you CustomControls and UserControls. They are two very similar things yet completely different from each other. CustomControls are Buttons, Labels, TextBoxes, DataGrids...etc. They are basically simple stand-alone controls. UserControls are groups of stand-alone controls serving a purpose such as example a Button and a ComboBox next to each other so user can select something in ComboBox and confirm that by clicking the Button.
If you wish to display data from database I suggest you DataGrid which will give you a table-alike look with rows and columns and all that. If you wish to place few buttons next to DataGrid on which the user may click to insert a new row or to edit a certain cell then I suggest you to wrap all that with a UserControl which you can reuse in other places where you have to display and change data from database too.
You should be using a datagrid and can customize its template to render individual cells as Textblock (lighter version of Label) from a rendering perspective. The main difference between Textblock and Label is very minor things such as access keys and disabled state behavior. But from a WPF object hierarchy - Textblocks are much lighter. But besides that point - from your employer perspective - once you have customized the grid template and render them (so as they look as textblocks/labels) - your employer should have no problems.
Also as somebody suggested above - if you want to logically break sections of the UI since they maybe coming from a different table in db - then User controls is the way to go (for maintainability of code)
Let me know if you are looking for more technical details or need help further technically.
There is nothing wrong in making and using custom controls or user controls or defining some data templates which will be reused depending on how your data is organized.
For sure the UI looks pretty messy and some sort of grid should be used with templates for example where there is similar data. I also have the suggestion and first think about the data and the functionality before starting and let the UI be driven by that. For sure you will the reuse controls/templates. If you think in front on the model and behavior the UI can afterwards more easily changed.
Create your viewmodel correctly, implement the functionality in commands, use bindings, after that the UI will come naturally, reuse controls, use several grids, make the UI more user friendly using several regions, tabs, windows or anything that makes the user more comfortable.
I'm currently spiking with the WPF RichTextBox before I decide whether or not it can be used in a project of mine.
What I need is to have elements of text representing various objects (other texts or objects), a bit like a WIKI but not quite. Clicking on such a text will make stuff happen, like navigating to other texts or providing additional options.
Anyway, as these little text bits represent other objects I would like to protect them but I have succeeded with this only in part: The user cannot position a caret inside such a text element and edit/delete it but it is still possible to make a selection and delete/replace it, including my custom elements.
Have anyone travelled down this road with the RichTextBox? My latest experiment was to simply record all custom text elements when being part of a selection and then restoring them after the (destructive) edit. That fell apart because I can't find a way to re-insert my custom inline elements (derived from the Run class). The only way I've found to programmatically insert a Run (based) element at a specified position (TextPosition) is via its constructor.
Well, any hints would be greatly appreciated.
You are really looking for a FlowDocument, not a RichTextBox.
Boy did I get an education looking into this. I guess I've been spoiled by Powerbuilder, which has fantastic functionality for this out of the box.
Does anyone seriously write custom documentpaginator objects to handle reporting needs for their LOB apps? I want to be able to print "for free" and not have to code like crazy just to take whats on the screen and throw it on paper.
How are people doing this? Does anyone have a recommended 3rd party for allowing printing of largish datagrids?
Thanks
Paginating datagrids is a huge, huge pain. Simply drawing the grid on a page will not work as you have to handle things like fixed layout, expanding cells horizontally and vertically to show all data, word wrapping, splitting columns and rows into the page margin, splitting cells that overflow a page into multiple pages. Remember you can't scroll or resize a control on a piece of paper. Even if you find a magic control that can do all that, a grid with borders, shadows, and backgrounds that look good on a screen won't look good on paper.
For an old WinForms app that printed datagrids we implemented a completely separate report API for printouts. We printed the underlying ADO.Net dataSource using the free ReportViewer control. A tutorial is at gotreportviewer.com.
I've found the easiest way is to implement a generalized DocumentPaginator class for paginating anything I can put on screen. With my DocumentPaginator I don't need to worry about printing because I can take any arbitrary WPF control and tell it to print, and it will take multiple pages if necessary to display all the data.
I also use an inherited attached bool property "PrintView" that the user can control. Some of my controls change their appearance somewhat using a trigger on the "PrintView" property, so they will look better when printed.
I describe my DocumentPaginator solution in more detail in this answer, including a description of the algorithm required.
Please refer this control
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2009/10/Using-Text-Outlines-in-Silverlight.html
The formattedtext control is a shape which helps to generate the shape of the text with proper geometry. I would like to make this control act like a text box with cursors and features like typing in from keyboard.
Right now I use an invisible text box with a formattedtext control to act like that. But the cursor position always creates a problem when the size of the text is not equal to the size of the rendered text as shape.
Can anyone please show the way to achieve this.
Well, I built a syntax highlighting textbox using the method you describes.
Actually, at first I wanted to rebuilt everything too, but I thought : I have to build the caret fonctionnalities, the selection brush, manage a lot of different events, like selection with mouse or keyboard, deletion, Copy/Cut/Paste, etc etc...
That's a LOT of work, and windows users are used to select text in textboxes for instance, so this complex implementation cannot be left unimplemented. We must follow some Microsoft guidance on how a textbox must feel.
Actually, I think that building a new textbox from scratch is not the way to go. I suggest you to continue on your current method. If you have different fonts in the same textbox, use a RichTextBox, and handle the font changes in the textbox as well as in the formatted text.
Also, a good think to implement is to only draw the visible text with the formattedtext (but only if the user can write several hundreds of text lines).
In order to make a convenient UI for an .Net 2.0 Winforms application I am working on, I have need for a control that I'm pretty sure goes beyond the "out of the box" behavior of any standard control. A mock-up of what I'm trying to achieve follows:
Mock up http://www.claware.com/images/temp/mockup.png
Essentially, this part of the application attempts to parse words into syllables from tribal languages (no dictionary to refer to; any and all unicode characters are possible.) By the time the user gets this far, he has already defined the vowels / consonants in his language and some other configuration. There is then an iterative process of (1) the application guesses which syllables exist in the language based on some rules, (2) the user refines the guesses, selecting the correct parsings or manually parsing a word, (3) the application "learns" from the user's feedback and makes smarter guesses, (4) repeat until the data is "good enough" to move on.
The control needs to present each word (the grey headers), then all the syllable break guesses (the white areas with dots separating the parts of words.) There is also a way to manually enter a parsing, which will display a text area and save button (at the bottom of the mockup.) When the user hovers over a guess, the background changes and "accept / reject" buttons appear. Clicking on the accept, or entering a manual parsing, removes the entire word from the list. Clicking the reject button removes just that item.
I'm by no means 100% sold on the formatting I have above, but I think you can get a general idea of the types of formatting and functional control I need. The control will also scroll vertically--there may be thousands of words initially.
My question for you experienced WinForms developers is: where to start? I would really, really like to stay within the .Net core framework and extend an existing control as opposed to a third-party control. (At the risk of starting a religious war: yes, I suffer from NIH-syndrome, but it's a conscious decision based on a lot of quick-fix solutions but long-term problems with 3rd party controls.) Where can I get the most "bang for my bucK" and the least reinventing the wheel? ListView? ListBox? ScrollableControl? Do I need to go all the way back to Control and paint everything manually? I appreciate any help that could be provided!
[Edit] Thanks everyone for the ideas. It seems like the most elegant solution for my purposes is to create a custom control consisting of a FlowLayoutPanel and a VScrollBar. The FlowLayoutPanel can contain instances of the custom controls used for each word. But the FlowLayoutPanel is virtual, i.e. it only contains those instances which are visible (and some "just out of scroll"). The VScrollBar events determine what needs to be loaded. A bit of code to write, but isn't too bad and seems to work well.
I would look at the TableLayoutPanel and FlowLayoutPanel controls. These will let you organize a series of controls with moderate ease in a vertical fashion. I would then create a UserControl that consists of a label and 2 buttons. The UserControl will expose properties like Text and events that are exposed for the button clicks.. For each entry in the list, you will create an instance of the UserControl, assign the text value, and handle the click events. The instance will be placed in the Table/Flow panel in the correct order. Both of those layout panels do allow for inserting items between other items so you can add/remove items from the list dynamically.
Edit:
Given the length of what you are trying to render, I would consider using the DataGridView and do some custom rendering to make it perform how you want it to work. Using the rendering events of the DGV you can merge columns, change background colors (like highlighting the dark gray lines), turn on/off the buttons, and handle changing the grid into edit mode for your rows to allow modification or inserting of new values. This method would easily handle large datasets and you could bind directly to them very easily.
Well, this certainly looks like a candidate for a custom component that you should be creating yourself. You can create this using standard .Net drawing commands along with a text-box, and a regular button control.
Now you want to find out where to start.
Create a Windows Forms Control Library project.
Drop in the textbox and the button control.
The panel drawing code should preferably be done by code. This can be done using the regular GDI+ commands.
Edit:
Here's another idea, and one that I've practically used in my own project with great success.
You could use a web-browser control in the app, and show your data as html. You could update the source of the web-browser control based on the input in the textbox, and clicking on the links in the web browser control will give you the event that you can trap to do some action. Your CSS will work.
I used this technique to build the 'desktop' in an app I made called 'Correct Accounting Software'. People loved the desktop so much that it is one of the best loved features of the app.
Here's how I would do it:
Create a custom control. In this custom control, have a ListBox atop a LinkButton, and when the LinkButton is clicked you can make it give way to a TextBox. The ListBoxes will have the top row unselectable... you can probably get the rest from there. When you get your list of words, fill a Scrollable of some kind with one control for each word:
(foreach String word in words){
myScrollable.add(new MyComponent(word));
}
From there, I'm not sure what you want to do with the boxes or the data, but that's my initial idea on the UI setup.
Use the WebBrowser control and generate the HTML markup into it using DocumentStream or DocumentText.