RadControls or DevExpress or Infragistics with ITextSharp

Question

I'm looking for a rich text box for a winform application. C#, .net 4.0

I need support for Bold, Underline, bullets and numbering in the text box. In the future, to add language support with spelling correction is a wish.

I need this to work with ITextSharp for report generation.

I'd appreciate input on which choise of controls that would best suit my needs.

Answer 1

I've previously used on various projects RadControls, Infragistics and iTextSharp but not DevExpress so I can't speak to DevExpress. That being said, for the kinds of rich text editing you are describing, I think you can safely go with any of the 3. If it were up to me, I would go with Infragistics though.

I guess it's a matter of personal preference in this case but I've always found Infragistics to be easier to use than RadControls. I've also found Infragistics' documentation to be better (from the standpoint of ease of locating what I was looking for) than that of RadControls. Both Infragistics and Telerik (RadControls) support teams/communities were very active and helpful whenever I needed help.

Like I said, I can't speak to DevExpress but I would imagine it'll be very comparable to the other two in this context. If you have any specific questions about Infragistics and RadTools, feel free to ask. I'd be happy to answer them.

Answer 2

From your question i was not able to deduce which form of Windows Application are you talking about. Because as you know we can develop windows based application on .NET using Windows Presentation Foundation or traditionally known WinForms development. I cant speak for others but certianly can point you to 2 flavours available from Telerik for Windows Application Development. They are:

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RadControls for WinForms - RadRichTextBox:

Features:

1. Rich Text Formatting - Telerik RadRichTextBox control allows you to edit text and apply rich formatting options, like:
   • Bold
   • Italic
   • Underline
   • Strike Through
   • Text color and background
   • Bullet and numbered lists
   • Paragraph alignment and indentation
   • Show/Hide formatting symbols
   • Clear Formatting
   • Superscript and Subscript
2. Inserting pictures/symbol
3. SpellChecker - extensible spell checking for different languages, using built-in or custom dictionaries.
4. Multi-level Undo/Redo Support - Telerik RadRichTextBox provides desktop-like usability and control thanks to its multilevel Undo/Redo feature. It allows past actions to be reviewed and reversed, just like in Microsoft Word.
5. Two types of layout – Paged and Flow (as text in an HTML page viewed in a browser).
6. Multi-region selection - the built-in multi-region support enables you to perform various operations for more than one selection simultaneously.
7. Import/export - with Telerik RadRichTextBox control you can load XAML, HTML, RTF, DocX (rich-text) or TXT (plain text) into the control, you can format and edit it and then export it back to any of the above formats or PDF.

More information on this can be found at: http://www.telerik.com/products/winforms.aspx

Documentation for RichTextBox for WinForms can be found at: http://www.telerik.com/help/winforms/richtextbox-overview.html

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RadControls for WPF - RadRichTextBox:

Features:

1. Rich Text Formatting - Telerik RadRichTextBox control allows you to edit text and apply rich formatting options, like:
   • Bold,
   • Italic
   • Underline,
   • Strike Through, Superscript and Subscript
   • Usage of all available system fonts
   • Text color and background
   • Bullet and numbered lists
   • Paragraph alignment and indentation
   • Show/Hide formatting symbols
   • Clear Formatting
2. Inserting pictures/symbols/hyperlinks/custom UI elements
3. Table support – including nested tables, merging cells, setting different RowSpan and ColumnSpan, tables with auto width and more.
4. ContextMenu - a standard one is provided out of the box, but it can be easily customized or substituted for a user-defined one.
5. SelectionMiniToolbar - very similar to the one in MS Word, but can also be replaced with another.
6. SpellChecker - extensible spell checking for different languages, using built-in or custom dictionaries.
7. Printing – Using the native printing implementation of WPF.
8. Multi-level Undo/Redo Support - Telerik RadRichTextBox provides desktop-like usability and control thanks to its multilevel Undo/Redo feature. It allows past actions to be reviewed and reversed, just like in Microsoft Word.
9. Two types of layout – Paged and Flow (as text in an HTML page viewed in a browser).
10. Multi-region selection - the built-in multi-region support enables you to perform various operations for more than one selection simultaneously.
11. Rich-text clipboard – allows rich text copy/paste from Word, OpenOffice etc.; Import/export - with Telerik RadRichTextBox control you can load XAML, HTML, RTF, DocX (rich-text) or TXT (plain text) into the control, you can format and edit it and then export it back to any of the above formats or PDF.

More information can be read at : http://www.telerik.com/products/wpf/overview.aspx

Here is the documentation of RichTextBox : http://www.telerik.com/help/wpf/radrichtextbox-overview.html

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Hope with above information you are able to visualize the gamut of options our control provides.

Lohith (Tech Evangelist, Telerik India)