Better Way of Manipulating RichText in C#?

Question

I need to create and copy to the clipboard some RichText with standard "formatting" like bold/italics, indents and the like. The way I'm doing it now seems kind of inelegant... I'm creating a RichTextBox item and applying my formatting through that like so:

RichTextBox rtb = new RichTextBox();
Font boldfont = new Font("Times New Roman", 10, FontStyle.Bold);
rtb.Text = "sometext";
rtb.SelectAll()
rtb.SelectionFont = boldfont;
rtb.SelectionIndent = 12;

There has got to be a better way, but after a few hours of searching I was unable to come up with anything better. Any ideas?

Edit: The RichTextBox (rtb) is not displayed/drawn anywhere on a form. I'm just using the object to format my RichText.

Answer 1

You may want to suspend the layout of the richtextbox before you do all of that, to avoid unecessary flicker. That's one of the common mistakes I used to make which made it seem "inelegant"

Answer 2

You could create some utility extension methods to make it more 'elegant' :)

   public static void Set(this RichTextBox rtb, Font font, string text)
  {

         rtb.Text = text;
   rtb.SelectAll();
         rtb.SelectionFont = font;
             rtb.SelectionIndent = 12;
                 return rtb;

  }

And call like this:

someRtb.Set(yourFont, "The Text").AndThenYouCanAddMoreAndCHainThem();

Edit: I see now that you are not even displaying it. Hrm, interesting, sorry i wasnt of much help with providing a Non Rtb way.

Answer 3

I think your technique is a great way to accomplish what you're looking to do. I know what you mean...it feels kind of "dirty" because you're using a Winforms control for something other than it was intended for, but it just works. I've used this technique for years. Interested to see if anyone else has viable options.

Answer 4

Is this project helpful?

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/string/nrtftree.aspx