mfc richedit2 formatting

Question

I am trying to use a rich edit control to output some text on the screen:

Monday Press 1.
Your day is Monday
Tuesday Press 2.

I can't really find any simple examples of how to do this. all i have been able to sort out is setting the window text (setWindowText), but everything else is escaping me. Any short examples?

I have tried to convert the intended output to rtf through word. The output was excessive to the point that i couldn't use it. — Jason, Jan 15 '13 at 15:32
Ideally, i'd like to display the data on the dialog using html formatting. Is that possible? — Jason, Jan 15 '13 at 15:36
RichEdit doesn't do HTML formatting. Use an HTML control such as `IWebBrowser` (Trident/IE) for that. — MSalters, Jan 15 '13 at 16:06
@Jason: Yes. Get rid of the richedit control. Put the HTML in a file. Insert a "Microsoft Web Browser" control in your dialog (and attach a variable to it). Call `your_browser_control.Navigate("file://your_html_file.html");` — Jerry Coffin, Jan 15 '13 at 16:07

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 15 '13 at 16:37

Despite the comments, I'm going to answer the question you asked, about how to format data in a Rich Edit control. A few years ago, I had to do this, and came up with something that I could treat a little like an IOstream (if I were doing it today, I'd probably do it a bit differently, but such is life).

First, code to act like an IOstream, but write to a rich-edit control:

// rich_stream.h:
#ifndef RICH_STREAM_H
#define RICH_STREAM_H

class rich_stream { 
    CRichEditCtrl &ctrl;
public:
    rich_stream(CRichEditCtrl &ctrl_) : ctrl(ctrl_) { }

    void add_text(char const *txt) {
        ctrl.SetSel(-1,-1);
        ctrl.ReplaceSel(txt);
    }

    void add_int(int val) {
        CString temp;
        temp.Format("%d", val);
        add_text(temp);
    }

    void set_char_format(CHARFORMAT &fmt) {
        ctrl.SetSelectionCharFormat(fmt);
    }    
};

inline rich_stream &operator<<(rich_stream &s, char const *t) {
    s.add_text(t);
    return s;
}

inline rich_stream &operator<<(rich_stream &s, CHARFORMAT &fmt) {
    s.set_char_format(fmt);
    return s;
}

inline CString nl() {
    return CString("\n\n");
}

inline rich_stream &operator<<(rich_stream &s, CString (*f)()) {
    s.add_text(f());
    return s;
}

inline rich_stream &operator<<(rich_stream &s, int val) {
    s.add_int(val);
    return s;
}
#endif

Then, I'd use this something like:

CHARFORMAT bold;

memset(&bold, 0, sizeof(bold));
bold.cbSize = sizeof(bold);
bold.dwMask = CFM_BOLD | CFM_FACE | CFM_SIZE;
bold.dwEffects = CFE_BOLD;
strcpy(bold.szFaceName, "Times");
bold.yHeight = 14 * 20;

CHARFORMAT normal;
memset(&normal, 0, sizeof(normal));
normal.cbSize = sizeof(normal);
normal.dwMask = CFM_BOLD | CFM_FACE | CFM_SIZE;
normal.dwEffects = 0;
strcpy(normal.szFaceName, "Times");
normal.yHeight = 14 * 20;

// ...    

rich_stream txt(GetRichEditCtrl());

txt << bold << "Heading 1: " << normal << info1 << nl
    << bold << "Heading 2: " << normal << info2 << nl
    << bold << "Heading 3: " << normal << info3;

If I were doing this today, I'd almost certainly create a small class as a wrapper for a CHARFORMAT so I could construct the formatting objects a little more cleanly. I'd probably also at least think hard about implementing it as a normal iostream with a stream buffer that inserted data into the rich edit control (but at the time I didn't know streams well enough to know I should do that).

Glancing at it, there are a few other things that aren't really exactly right either -- add_text uses SetSel(-1, -1);. This should really retrieve the current length of the text (e.g., with GetWindowTextLength, and set the selection to just after the end.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 15 '13 at 16:12

1

Use Wordpad, it's an RichEdit control too. It will generate your RTF in a way that's naturally compatible with your control.

answered Jan 15 '13 at 16:12

MSalters

173,980
10
155
350

mfc richedit2 formatting

2 Answers2

Linked