Visio: Automation to simplify text formatting
Summary for the impatient: VisioAutoExt (http://www.codeplex.com/visioautoext) now lets you more easily create richly formatted text
It's relatively easy to control the formatting for all the text for a shape. Previously I simplified this by adding these extension methods to the Visio.Shape class:
Shape.SetTextColor(... )
Shape.SetTextFont(... )
Shape.SetTextHorizontalAlignment( ... )
etc.
With Visio 2007's object model, for more richly formatted text, working with specific regions of text is a very cumbersome. Version 2.3 of VisioAutoExt tries to address this by adding this extension method ..
Shape.SetTextMarkup( ... )
In short, feed it some XML with formatting instructions and you'll get a nicely formatted block of text. It's not at the stage where you can dump in HTML have it just work, but it's a step in that direction. And certainly much easier than learning about and using Characters.set_CharProps( ... )
How simple?
Below is some code from the DemoTextMarkup project in the solution:
Sample 1
string text1 = @"
<text font=""Calibri"" size=""15"" color=""#ff0000"">
Calibri 15pt [red]
<text font=""Segoe UI"" size=""20"" color=""#0000ff"">
Segoe UI 20 pt [blue]
<text italic=""1"" halign=""left"" color=""#505050"">
This text is in italic (left) [gray]
<text bold=""1"" italic=""1"" halign=""right"">
This should be bold italic (right)
</text>
<text bold=""1"" halign=""middle"">
This should be bold in the middle
</text>
</text>
</text>
Calibri 15pt
</text>";
Visio.Application visio = VisioUtil.LaunchVisioApplication();
Visio.Document doc = visio.CreateDocument(new Isotope.Drawing.Size(30, 10));
Visio.Page page = doc.Pages[1];
Visio.Shape shape;
shape = page.DrawRectangle(0, 0, 10, 8);
shape.SetTextMarkup(text1);
This generates this output:
Sample 2
string text2 = @"
<text size=""20"" font=""Segoe UI""> The lines should be bulleted
<text bullets=""1"" halign=""left""> This a demonstration of <text bold=""1"">bold</text> text
A demonstration of <text italic=""1"">italic</text> text
Formatting can be combined to form <text bold=""1"" italic=""1"">bold italic</text>
This world is <text underline=""1"" >underlined</text>
</text>
The bullets have ended.
</text> ";
shape = page.DrawRectangle(10, 0, 20, 8);
shape.SetTextMarkup(text2);
Sample 3
string text3 = @"
<text size=""20"" font=""Segoe UI"" halign=""left""> The lines below should be indented
<text indent=""25"">
indent 25
</text>
<text indent=""50"">
indent 50
</text>
<text indent=""75"">
indent 75
</text>
<text indent=""100"">
indent 100
</text>
w
The indenting has ended.
</text> ";
shape = page.DrawRectangle(20, 0, 30, 8);
shape.SetTextMarkup(text3);
Use the Source
VisioAutoExt v 2.3 on CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/visioautoext
