help on word wrap problem

Question

I created an application that askes several questions. One of the questions is

Installations instructions. So the user of my application will type installation instructions into a textbox and that info will be written to a textfile using streamwriter(). My problem is that on the form, the text wordwraps to fit the textbox fine, but when you open up the text file in notepade, you get one really long line of text. I need a way to get my text to wordwrap in notepad also. I am aware of the fact that notepad has a wordwrap option, but i need to program this into my code. I have no idea how to do that. this is a sample of the code i am using

sw.WriteLine("***********************************************************************");

sw.WriteLine("* *");

sw.WriteLine("* Installation Instructions *");

sw.WriteLine("* *");

sw.WriteLine("***********************************************************************");

sw.WriteLine(text8); //this needs to be word wrapped !

sw.WriteLine();

Dave · Answer

Ok. Try this. Create a new method that returns a string. Pass it the text of the relevant TextBox: private String GetWrappedText(String txtSomeTextBox.Text) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); String theText = txtSomeTextBox .Text; String tmpLine = ; int start = 0; int idxLastSpace; int offset = 0; for (int i = 0; i { if (i % 80 == 0 && i != 0) { tmpLine = theText.Substring(start 80); idxLastSpace = tmpLine.LastIndexOf(' '); sb.Append(tmpLine 0 idxLastSpace); sb.Append(
); offset = tmpLine.Length - 1 - idxLastSpace; sb.Append(tmpLine idxLastSpace + 1 offset); start = i; } } tmpLine = theText.Substring(start); sb.Append(tmpLine); return sb.ToString(); } You can then use the StreamWriter with that method as follows: sw.WriteLine(GetWrappedText(text11.Text)) See how that goes.

jamie · Answer

OK i gave it a try but i cannot figure out how to integrate it with my code. Here is the relevant code. textbox 8 9 10 and 11 are the ones that need to word wrap text8 = textBox8.Text; text9 = textBox9.Text; text10 = textBox10.Text; text11 = textBox11.Text; if (textBox8.Text.Equals(  )) sw.Close(); else { sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( * Installation Instructions * ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine(text8 + 
 ); sw.WriteLine(); } if (text9.Equals(  )) sw.Close(); else { sw.WriteLine(); sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( * Custom Content * ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine(); sw.WriteLine(text9); } if (text10.Equals(  )) sw.Close(); else { sw.WriteLine(); sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( * Special Thanks * ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine(); sw.WriteLine(text10); sw.WriteLine(); } if (text11.Equals(  )) sw.Close(); else { sw.WriteLine(); sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( * Additional Notes * ); sw.WriteLine( * * ); sw.WriteLine( *********************************************************************** ); sw.WriteLine(); sw.WriteLine(text11); } MessageBox .Show( The ReadMe file has been generated  Success  MessageBoxButtons .OK MessageBoxIcon .Exclamation); sw.Close(); } }

jamie · Answer

ok i will give it a go and let you know how it works. thanks for your help. this will take me some time.

Dave · Answer

Hi Jamie I had a bit of time so I refined my suggestion to get it working properly. Try plugging in the following code (adapting it appropriately for your situation). This is based on a line-length of 80 but you can change that easily. StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); String theText = textBox1.Text; String tmpLine = ; int start = 0; int idxLastSpace; int offset = 0; for (int i = 0; i { if (i % 80 == 0 && i != 0) { tmpLine = theText.Substring(start 80); idxLastSpace = tmpLine.LastIndexOf(' '); sb.Append(tmpLine 0 idxLastSpace); sb.Append(
); offset = tmpLine.Length - 1 - idxLastSpace; sb.Append(tmpLine idxLastSpace + 1 offset); start = i; } } tmpLine = theText.Substring(start); sb.Append(tmpLine); You could then write sb to file or whatever you need to do with it.

John Penn · Answer

In situations like this I would try to go for the lowest common denominator. In this case why not aim for a line wrap at column 60 (or maybe even 40?) so that you cover the vast majority of users. Dave's suggestion would work by inserting newline characters at predefined intervals. I would only add to that by reducing the interval as I explained above.

jamie · Answer

do you have a better solution?

John Penn · Answer

Another point that might be worth considering is that the user may want to view the generated files in a text editor other than NotePad. Each text editor will have its own word wrap functionality and may not always wrap at column 80 as you're expecting here.

jamie · Answer

ok i set the AcceptsReturn to true and that worked part of the way. it did show the return in the text file so i am happy about that. so thanks for that info. Now is there a way of setting the width of the line? I saw code somewhere were you could set the width and have it word wrap around the width. does that make sense?

Dave · Answer

When the user enters the text will they be hitting return to separate lines? If so there is a Property of TextBoxes called 'acceptsreturn'. Set that to true and any returns will be included in the TextBox text. If not you should be able to manipulate the string entered into the textbox. You could use the StringBuilder class to assist in that. If each line is to have 80 characters something like: StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); for(int i=0; i { if(i % 80 == 0 && i != 0) sb.Append(
); else sb.Append(txtTextBoxName.Text[i]) } That's untested and off the top of my head.