There's one remaining hurdle for this free html editor: -- multi-paragraph-length CSS-style-based formatting. Let me illustrate what I mean.


<p>this is paragraph 1 xxxxxxxxx</p>
<p>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</p>
<p>xxxxx this is paragraph 3</p>

where the x's represent the current selected texts. To format this selection to a Font of say "Courier New" under a CSS-style-based formatting, the source needs to be changed to:

<p>this is paragraph 1 <span class=style1>xxxxxxxxx</span></p>
<p class=style1>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</p>
<p><span class=style1>xxxxx</span> this is paragraph 3</p>

where style1 contains the "Courier New" CSS style.

The difficult part is figuring out the fragments of selected and unselected text on the first and last paragraphs, and inserting a span tag. This is the hurdle I'm talking about. Any hint(s) on how to go about solving this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Audimar

Get the latest MSHTML Writer here:

[www.sas2themax.com]

I'm pleased to say that this "hurdle" has been solved!

You can now download the latest version (1.0.0.2) here:

[www.sas2themax.com]


Please let me know if there are loopholes in the solution.

Thanks, Audimar

Saw one loophole -- only the first paragraph is formatted if there are blank paragraphs or spaces in between lines of text. Should be easy to fix.

Audimar

Multi-paragraph-length CSS-style-based formatting is now working.

Latest vesion is 1.0.0.3:

[www.sas2themax.com]

I'm preparing a more "professional-looking" application with dockable Properties window. The current application was originally meant to be just a "demo".

Let me know if you see more loopholes.

Regards, Audimar

New demo version (1.0.0.4) with a slightly new look (and several bug fixes).

[www.sas2themax.com]


Getting tired and bored, Audimar:-)

You got a nice "review" here:

[workblog.jonrowett.com]

"This is a really nice, free, lightweight, CSS based Xhtml editor, written in .NET 2.0."

Tim

Hey Tim, thanks a lot -- nice and interesting articles!

I tried running the app under Microsoft Vista (Beta build) and found out that text selection with the mouse doesn't work. So what I did was to fully incorporate the changes you've made under your Subversion, and voila -- mouse selection is now working. I'll upload the new version as soon as I can.

CSS-based formatting also needs some refinements. Sometimes, styles that are no longer in use remain in the html source code. I've seen this happen in Dreamweaver MX, so I don't feel bad at all. :-)

And for multi-paragraph-length formatting, it works most of the time, but sometimes the highlighting either disappears after applying a particular style (for example, a new Font size), or the selection is off by a few characters. There are other anomalies.

This means there's a lot more work to do. :-)

Thanks again for the nice publicity.

Best, Audimar

Are we ever going to get a source code drop for this???

I would pay to get your source code so that I could integrate it into our application. Especially if I could hook in inline spell checking. Your table editor etc. solves all kinds of problems and really refines the entire process.

James,

in case somebody would pay for such a component a commercial implementation already exists. We have such a table editor and spell checking integration since more than two years.

See [www.netrixcomponent.net]

Meanwhile the component is much more stable than it was on first announcment here and has all things implemented others still fiting with. And it starts with $199 (with spellchecker $399, Advanced version only), so just compare with the effort to get it for your self.

Source code is also available, by the way.

Regards,

Joerg

James, sorry the source is not for sale at the moment. I know you're writing your own component too, so Joerg's offer obviously wouldn't do you any good.

Interestingly, my first post in this forum some years back was about purchasing a source code for table editing from someone who already has a working solution. I did found NetRix, but found it to be lacking in many features and quite buggy at that time, so I wrote my own.

Audimar

Sorry for the bad grammar -- "did found" :-)

Audimar

I only have my own because no one else has done better But there are things that I need in my own that I don't have time to do, but I do need data binding and a bunch of other things which no one else seems to be doing.

(i.e. it needs to work like a textbox/richtext box)

I'd be overjoyed to contribute to one set of code and then use that.