How To:

Apply Bold, Italic and Underline Formatting to Selected Text in a .NET RichTextBox (Part 2)
DanieldotNET DEC2013 How to programmatically apply more than one font style (bold, italic or underline) to selected text in a RichTextBox control. Software Version: Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition, .NET 3.5

Contents
Introduction The FontStyle Enumeration Combining FontStyle Values Switching off a single FontStyle from a FontStyle Combination Building the Demo Application Running Demo

Introduction
In the first part of this two-part article on RichTextBox font style formatting (Apply Bold, Italic and Underline Formatting to Selected Text in a .NET RichTextBox (Part 1)) it was demonstrated how to apply a single font style to selected text in a RichTextBox. However, the program was unable to apply multiple font styles to the text. This capability is useful in word processing applications, for instance the text below has all three font styles bold, italic and underline applied to it.

RichTextBox
How this could be accomplished is the subject of this second article of the two-part article.

The FontStyle Enumeration

The FontStyle Enumeration is a member of the System.Drawing namespace, and is used to specify style information that can be applied to text. The enumeration has the following member values Member name Regular Bold Italic Underline Strikeout Value 0 1 2 4 8 Description Normal text Bold text Italic text Underlined text Text with a line through the middle Example

RichTextBox RichTextBox RichTextBox RichTextBox RichTextBox

FontStyle also has a FlagsAttribute attribute, which allows it to be treated as a set of flags. Without this attribute, each member value of the enumeration would be mutually exclusive, that is a FontStyle variable would either be Regular, Bold, Italic, Underline, or Strikeout. However, since it is now a set of flags, a variable declared as FontStyle can contain a combination of individual font styles. It can contain Bold Italic, or Bold Italic Underline.

Combining FontStyle values

To achieve this combination, a bitwise-OR should be applied to combine the required styles. For example, to combine Bold and Italic, say FontStyle.Bold Or FontStyle.Italic = BoldItalic In detail, what is happening is a bitwise combination of the binary values for Bold and Italic. That is Value Or FontStyle.Bold FontStyle.Italic = 1 = Or 2 Binary = 0001 = Or 0010 0011

BoldItalic

The bitwise-Or compares each bit position; it produces zero only when both positions are zero, otherwise, it produces one. This new value is now encodes the fact that the new style is a combination of both Bold and Italic. In a similar way, to combine Bold Italic and Underline

Value FontStyle.Bold = 1 FontStyle.Italic = Or 2 FontStyle.Underline = Or 2

Binary = 0001 = Or 0010 = Or 0100 0111

Or Or

BoldItalicUnderline

Switching Off a single FontStyle from a FontStyle Combination

To remove a font style from a combination of font styles, watch what happens when the bitwise-AND and bitwise-NOT are used in combination. Binary And BoldItalicUnderline (Not FontStyle.Bold) = 0111 = 0111 = And (Not 0001) = And 1110 0110 ItalicUnderline

Bitwise-Not simply swaps every 1 with 0, and 0 with 1. Bitwise-And compares the bit positions; if all are ones, it produces a one for that position, otherwise it produces a zero.

Building the Demo Application

This demo application applies a combination of font styles (Bold, Italic, and Underline) to selected text in a rich text box. It can also toggle a font style off/on. 1. Create a new Windows Application named BoldItalicUnderline2.

2. Put three buttons and a RichTextBox control on Form1. In the Properties Window, change the properties of the controls as follows: Button1 Text = Bold Button2 Text = Italic Button3 Text = Underline RichTextBox1 Font.Size = 14 Form1 Text = Bold Italic Underline Demo 2 The interface should now look like the image below

a. Write the code in the Code Window to resemble the one below. The three event handlers are similar to each other.

Visual Basic Public Class Form1 Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _ Handles Button1.Click Dim style As FontStyle ' Test if there is Bold FontStyling in ' the Selection's FontStyle If RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Bold Then ' Since Bold Style Exists, undo the Bold Style style = RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Style _ And Not FontStyle.Bold RichTextBox1.SelectionFont = _ New Font(RichTextBox1.SelectionFont, style) Else ' Since there is no Bold Style, ' apply the Bold Style style = RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Style _ Or FontStyle.Bold RichTextBox1.SelectionFont = _ New Font(RichTextBox1.SelectionFont, style) End If ' Set input focus on the RichTextBox RichTextBox1.Focus() End Sub

Private Sub Button2_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _ Handles Button2.Click Dim style As FontStyle ' Test if there is Italic FontStyling ' in the Selection's FontStyle If RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Italic Then ' Since Italic Style Exists, undo the Italic Style style = RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Style _ And Not FontStyle.Italic RichTextBox1.SelectionFont = _ New Font(RichTextBox1.SelectionFont, style) Else ' Since there is no Italic Style, ' apply the Italic Style style = RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Style _ Or FontStyle.Italic RichTextBox1.SelectionFont = _ New Font(RichTextBox1.SelectionFont, style) End If ' Set input focus on the RichTextBox RichTextBox1.Focus() End Sub

Private Sub Button3_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _ Handles Button3.Click Dim style As FontStyle ' Test if there is Underline FontStyling ' in the Selection's FontStyle If RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Underline Then ' Since Underline Style Exists, undo the Underline Style style = RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Style _ And Not FontStyle.Underline RichTextBox1.SelectionFont = _ New Font(RichTextBox1.SelectionFont, style) Else ' Since there is no Underline Style, ' apply the Underline Style style = RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Style _ Or FontStyle.Underline RichTextBox1.SelectionFont = _ New Font(RichTextBox1.SelectionFont, style) End If ' Set input focus on the RichTextBox RichTextBox1.Focus() End Sub End Class The event handler for Button1 is responsible for toggling the Bold style on/off. It checks if the Bold style is on in the font style combination. It does this by getting the Boolean value of the following expression Visual Basic RichTextBox1.SelectionFont.Bold

RichTextBox1s SelectionFont Property has a Bold Property which returns True if the FontStyle of the SelectionFont is Bold, otherwise it returns False. It then uses the value to change the Bold style from On to Off (if True), or Off to On (if False).

Running the Demo

Press the F5 key to test the demo. Type any text into the RichTextBox. Select any text and then click any of the buttons to apply the needed font style.

The figure shows the text The quick brown fox formatted as The quick brown fox To do it, select quick and press button Bold and button Underline Then, select brown and press button Italic Finally, select the text fox and press button Bold and button Italic