How can I do inline formatting (bold and underline) for PDF generated by Prawnto in Rails?
I generate a PDF file using Prawn and the Prawnto plugin in my rails application.
I create a standard form with a standard textarea, and submit that as the body of the PDF file.
However, I need to be able to format words and sentences with:
- bold
- underline
- maybe different type sizes
I want to be able to do it from within the textarea input box. Right now, because I use prawnto, I basically am genering a view which outputs what is in the textarea.
But if I put, say, bold in the text area, it doesn't format, it just renders.
How do I do this?
Answer
we may have similar apps...
Prawn can do basic inline formatting based on (simple) HTML - take a look at the text/inline_format.rb example on github. In fact, take a look at the whole Prawn Example Gallery if you haven't - it's one of the best I've seen.
To get the HTML you need you can either type HTML straight into the textarea (a bit ugly - might not be a good idea if anyone besides you will be entering text) or use something like Markdown to interpret more user-friendly "style codes" like StackOverflow does. I think BlueCloth is the best-known ruby implementation, but I've never used it myself.
Bold and underline? No problem. Font size might be harder - I imagine it would be tricky to get BlueCloth to emit something like the (deprecated) < font > tag they use in the Prawn example...
Hope this helps - cheers!