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Gios WORD .NET Library (using RTF specification)

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8 Aug 2005LGPL31 min read 363.5K   4.6K   149   110
A .NET library for generating Word documents (.DOC) using the RTF (Rich Text Format) specification.

This is the output of "Example 1", included in the library.

Introduction

The Gios WORD .NET is the second thing that a good C# developer needs to deploy in his business projects... The first one?!? You probably know it is the Gios PDF .NET library!

So, that's why I decided to develop this library: after the need for generating PDFs, you will need the same for WORDs!

Gios WORD .NET supports:

  • Tables with rows and columns span.
  • Images
  • Header and Footer
  • Line indent - paragraph
  • Custom Control Words (See the Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification for this implementation.)
  • Output to a generic System.IO.Stream object.

Background

Building a library for exporting documents in the Rich Text Format is quite easier than for PDFs. In fact, the Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification, version 1.8 shows how simple it is to generate a word document with all the well known features. I used the version 1.5 (which is fully compatible with WORD 97).

Using the code

The library is very simple to be used! The first thing you need to do is instantiating a new WordDocument:

C#
WordDocument myWordDocument=
    new WordDocument(WordDocumentFormat.Letter_8_5x11);

and with the WordDocument object you can start with the description of the document. It's like an automation. For example, if you want to set the font, you can write:

C#
myWordDocument.SetFont(new Font("Comic Sans MS",
                                60,FontStyle.Bold));
myWordDocument.SetForegroundColor(Color.Red);
myWordDocument.SetFontBackgroundColor(Color.Yellow);

And now we set some alignment:

C#
myWordDocument.SetTextAlign(WordTextAlign.Center);

To write a text... You can imagine:

C#
myWordDocument.Write("Hello World!");

And, in the end, you output the document!

C#
myWordDocument.SaveToFile("HelloWorld.doc");

And this is the result:

Remember, you can also output the WORD Document to a generic stream. These are the lines for a web response:

C#
Response.ClearHeaders();
Response.AppendHeader("Content-disposition",
   "attachment;filename=HelloWorld.doc");
Response.ContentType="application/msword"; 
myPdfDocument.SaveToStream(Response.OutputStream);
Response.End();

To continue with the training, please download the library and follow the examples!

History

  • August 8th, 2005 - First release.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPLv3)


Written By
Web Developer
Italy Italy
Freelance software ASPNET / C# Software Developer

I live in Torino, Italy

my homepage is: http://www.paologios.com

Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralRe: good , but Pin
Rei Miyasaka8-Aug-05 21:05
Rei Miyasaka8-Aug-05 21:05 
GeneralRe: good , but Pin
Paolo Gios8-Aug-05 23:29
Paolo Gios8-Aug-05 23:29 
GeneralRe: good , but Pin
Rei Miyasaka9-Aug-05 2:26
Rei Miyasaka9-Aug-05 2:26 
GeneralRe: good , but Pin
Huisheng Chen9-Aug-05 2:44
Huisheng Chen9-Aug-05 2:44 
GeneralI think I got it Pin
Rei Miyasaka9-Aug-05 16:32
Rei Miyasaka9-Aug-05 16:32 
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
Huisheng Chen10-Aug-05 5:22
Huisheng Chen10-Aug-05 5:22 
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
Paolo Gios10-Aug-05 6:55
Paolo Gios10-Aug-05 6:55 
GeneralA little bit of sad news Pin
Rei Miyasaka12-Aug-05 14:20
Rei Miyasaka12-Aug-05 14:20 
I sent suggestions to MSDN Product Feedback Center to fix the two issues with System.Drawing.Font, and they've decided that neither are worth fixing since they might introduce breaking changes.

I can understand since the framework is in itself a standard, and exceptions to the no-breaking-changes rule are expensive, but the two problems are critical to passive asian language support. Many developers are no doubt releasing products without noticing the problems until they get angry users. I'm sure almost everyone uses the GdiCharSet and Name properties expecting them to return the right values.

If you agree with my concern, I'd be glad if you could please submit votes to try to catch their attention.

Font.Name with non-English font names returns English name, misleading[^]

Font.GdiCharSet always returns 1[^]

Thanks,
Rei
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
percyboy16-Aug-05 23:02
percyboy16-Aug-05 23:02 
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
Paolo Gios16-Aug-05 23:24
Paolo Gios16-Aug-05 23:24 
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
Simon Pham25-Aug-05 4:57
Simon Pham25-Aug-05 4:57 
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
dunglesi2-Jan-06 22:46
dunglesi2-Jan-06 22:46 
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
Mausi23-Nov-05 0:34
Mausi23-Nov-05 0:34 
GeneralRe: I think I got it Pin
Member 95538034-Dec-12 22:03
Member 95538034-Dec-12 22:03 
GeneralRe: good , but Pin
meduza19-Oct-06 23:46
meduza19-Oct-06 23:46 
GeneralRe: good , but Pin
Marcin Lew11-Aug-06 7:30
Marcin Lew11-Aug-06 7:30 

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