Hello!

I am trying to use your richtextbox and am coming across a nasty problem which I think must be solvable since I've not seen it mentioned anywhere else.  First of all, I'm running Silverlight 3 on VS 2008.

The goal is to have an HTML editor in my silverlight admin site.  Here is the xaml for my control:

<liquidRichText:RichTextBox x:Name="html_Body" Grid.Row="4" HTML="{Binding Path=Article_Body, Mode=TwoWay}"

                        Padding="0" Margin="0" FontSize="14" AcceptsReturn="True" AutoWrap="True" EnableSpellCheck="False"

                        CreateDefaultStyles="False" EnableGlobalLinkStyle="False" EnablePastingExternalStyles="False"

                        BorderThickness="0" ContentChanged="html_Body_ContentChanged"  />

When I select an article through other controls, all the events are wired nicely so that the parent control is databound to a news article.  The HTML editor here is meant for editting the body of the article.  Below this editor I have this control:

<TextBox x:Name="txt_Body" Grid.Row="5" Text="{Binding Path=Article_Body, Mode=TwoWay}" Visibility="Visible"

                        TextWrapping="Wrap" Padding="0" AcceptsReturn="True" Background="#FFE0E0E0" BorderThickness="2" />

So we effectively have the HTML view and the source view.  However, the richtextbox does not seem to do two-way binding.  Any updates there are not reflected in the textbox below.  Thats okay, I have just added in a method that updates the data object on ContentChanged of the richtextbox.  Now when editting the HTML view, the source view updates - lovely!

However, this is exposing something the richtextbox is doing which I would rather it didn't.  A bunch of default styles are appearing and ravaging through my previously neat source.  This paragraph:

<p>France Telecom SA's mobile unit Orange and U.S.-based Apple Inc. have dropped their exclusivity deals over the distribution of Apple's iPhone handsets in France, the French competition authority said Tuesday.</p>

Turns into:

<p><span class="Normal">France Telecom SA's mobile unit Orange and U.S.-based Apple Inc. have dropped their exclusivity deals over the distribution of Apple's iPhone handsets in France, the French competition authority said Tuesday.</span></p>

Similarly, here is a more violently assaulted paragraph:

<p><span class="Normal">The announcement was made by the companies to the French </span><span class="Normal">competition regulator and comes several months after the </span><span class="Normal">regulator temporarily ruled against the exclusivity deal, in </span><span class="Normal">December 2008, as Orange's domestic competitors Vivendi's </span><span class="Normal">mobile unit SFR and Bouygues' Bouygues Telecom called the deal </span><span class="Normal">into question.</span></p>

And here is the stylesheet inserted at the very beginning:

<style type="text/css">

p {margin:0px 0px 0px 2px;}

ul {margin-top:2px;margin-bottom:2px;}

ol {margin-top:2px;margin-bottom:2px;}

.Normal {font-family:Portable User Interface;font-size:14px;vertical-align:middle;color:#000000;}

.TableDefault {border-collapse:collapse;border:1px solid #000000;}

.TableDefault th {padding:2px;vertical-align:top;text-align:left;border:1px solid #000000;}

.TableDefault td {padding:2px;vertical-align:top;text-align:left;border:1px solid #000000;}

</style>

I have tried to set the CreateDefaultStyles to false, I have also tried to forcably remove all styles and tablestyles from the richtextbox control upon any change of content or databind (as it likes to add more in all the time) but this then causes errors.  It shouldn't be this hard to get it to leave the content alone and just show it.  I must be missing something.

Please help me!  Thank you very much in advance.

Is there also a convenient collection of controls for HTML editting?  Standard sorts of buttons, bold, italic, insert image, insert table - nothing more complicated than that?

Tim

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your post.  The RichTextBox doesn't support 2-way binding at this time.  The problem you have with the styles is simply that the HTML export methods of the RichTextBox are meant only to provide a method for RichText XML content to be displayed as HTML.  The quality of the HTML exported will never be to the standard of HTML imported due to the way the RichTextBox handles styling.

Thanks!

Okay dokey, thanks very much for the reply!  Maybe I'll make a competitor ;-)

Hi Dan

About TwoWay Bindings - are you working on it? Can we expect it soon? (Or are there any problems preventing you from doing so, if yes, I'd be happy to know since I'll try to implement it)

Thanks,

Dänu

I have been able to get the two way binding working by using a dependencyPropery.  The content of the RichTexbox is loaded with the dependencyPropery value on UserControl Loaded event and updated on the ContentChanged event of the RichTextbox

public string HtmlText

        {

            get { return (string)GetValue(HtmlTextTextProperty); }

            set { SetValue(HtmlTextTextProperty,value); }

        }

        public static readonly DependencyProperty HtmlTextTextProperty =

          DependencyProperty.Register("HtmlText", typeof(string), typeof(CustomRichTextBox), new PropertyMetadata("", HtmlText_PropertyChangedCallback));

        private static void HtmlText_PropertyChangedCallback(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)

        {

            //empty

            if (e.NewValue == null)

            {

                (d as CustomRichTextBox).HtmlText = "";

            }

        }

private void UserControl_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

        {

            richTextBox.HTML = HtmlText;

        }

 public CustomRichTextBox()

        {

              InitializeComponent();

              richTextBox.ContentChanged += new RichTextBoxEventHandler(richTextBox_ContentChanged);

              .....

        }

void richTextBox_ContentChanged(object sender, RichTextBoxEventArgs e)

        {

            HtmlText = richTextBox.Save(Format.HTML, RichTextSaveOptions.InlineStyles);

        }

Looks like i made a mistake, Should be the following:

public string HtmlText

        {

            get { return (string)GetValue(HtmlTextTextProperty); }

            set { SetValue(HtmlTextTextProperty,value); }

        }

        public static readonly DependencyProperty HtmlTextTextProperty =

          DependencyProperty.Register("HtmlText", typeof(string), typeof(CustomRichTextBox), new PropertyMetadata("", HtmlText_PropertyChangedCallback));

        private static void HtmlText_PropertyChangedCallback(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)

        {

            //empty

            if (e.NewValue == null)

            {

                (d as CustomRichTextBox).HtmlText = "";

            }

//load initial values first time

            else if (e.NewValue != null && string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.OldValue as string))

            {

                (d as CustomRichTextBox).richTextBox.Load(Format.HTML, e.NewValue.ToString());

            }

        }

void richTextBox_ContentChanged(object sender, RichTextBoxEventArgs e)

        {

            HtmlText = richTextBox.Save(Format.HTML, RichTextSaveOptions.InlineStyles);

        }