Font size or other formatting in RichTextBox

Question

I am very disappointed by Silverlight's RichTextBox. I tried to use it for rich text editor, but I found that it supports only a few basic formatting properties: paragraph, endline, bold, italic, underline. And nothing else.

Please, can somebody explain how is this crippled down "rich" text box meant to be used? Is it possible to add more formatting features like font size, font color, font face etc. to it without writing tons of source code in C#? I know that it is possible to add custom UIElements to it, but I don't think that is suitable for adding more text formatting capabilities. Also adding of custom UIElements render built-in import/export xaml functionality useless, as it throws out all UIElements on export. This control is so crippled and unfinished! Or am I just blind and missing something somewhere?

Also, does anybody know if this control is going to be enhanced in upcoming Silverlight 5? It would be nice to have a real "rich" text box with some decent HTML export and import.

Answer 1

I don't have a direct answer to your question but here's my experience.

I did spend a lot of time trying to work with silverlight's built-in RichTextBox. There's a couple of example on how to change the font / foreground / background and other text formatting but there's so much code involved, it's almost like building your own RichTextBox.

After wasting my time trying to implement (what should have been) basics RichTextBox functionalities, I finally gave up on this component and I decided to go with a third party RichTextBox.

RadRichTextBox from Telerik is a great product but it's not the only RichTextBox components on the market. Yes, you have to pay for it but if you count the number of hours you'll spend on the silverlight's RichTextBox, it's worth it.