I’ve been researching on how to do this for about a week now and I guess I am looking for the best way to go about doing what I am trying to accomplish.
I am trying to build a module in my website that will allow users to create forms (letters) in a wysiwyg type of editor with the ability to insert variables where needed from a list. The site is written in MVC 2 using C# for the backend. I have started writing this module in Silverlight and have some of the functionality already created such as loading a list of variables from a DB using a WCF service and copying them to the selected text in the RichTextBox that comes with Silverlight by selecting them.
I have written this module before using PHP and ckeditor but the biggest problem I had with this is after the form was written and edited it would never come out looking exactly like it did in the wysiwyg editor. Because of this I’ve decided to move toward something that can handle RTF or DOC type files. I am trying to stay away from PDF because the user base that will be using the application will be more use to using Microsoft Word/Open Office than using Adobe Acrobat.
I started using the built in RichTextBox with Silverlight 4 but the only problem I came across is the issue with saving UI elements such as images or tables and for what this is used for this can be a “show stopper” for me. I have found some paid libraries that seem to be able to overcome this save issue and add a lot more functionality such as Teleriks RichTextBox or DevExpress’s RichTextBox but I guess I’m looking for the best solution for this type of module before I commit to purchasing a Silverlight Control suite.
I have looked into VectorLights RichTextBox plugin and was able to get something going but im not sure if their save does more than just a XAML export and I had issues replacing the selected text with their library. They also don’t have any documentation and I’m trying to avoid spending all my time on a forum asking questions about how to use their library.
So my question to you is for an app that needs to create RTF type documents, retain the exact or very close to the exact format of what you see in the editor, and allow you to replace your selected text with a variable by selecting it out of a list. How would you go about writing and what plugins/input formats would you use for this module. I will have to eventually pull this form out of a database, replace variables with information out of the db, and have the ability to print or email this form.
I’ve added a link below that the basics of what I have currently written in Silverlight.
Any suggestions would be greatful.
I did a little bit more research and decided to try the evaluation version of Telerik. This control allows me to save documents as a PDF or DOCX which is what I was looking for. The only issue I ran into with this is when saving as a PDF I am unable to pull it back into the control as a PDF so I will have to look into DOCX to PDF conversion in the future. But for now this is working exactly how I was wanting it to.