Creating Simple PDF Files With iTextSharp - Working with paragraphs

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However, Chunk is a bit low-level. More often, you'll be using Paragraph, which represents a paragraph of text. A paragraph has space before it, and it can be indented. Unlike a Chunk, a paragraph's text does not have to be consistent. That is, portions of the text can be underlined, struck through, etc. Here's a basic Paragraph:

Paragraph hello = new Paragraph("Hello. This is a paragraph.");

A Paragraph can be styled just like a Chunk:

hello.Font.sestyle(Font.ITALIC);

However, applying styles to specific sections of text within a Paragraph is a bit trickier. To do this, we must break the Paragraph into Chunk objects and then style each Chunk object. Here, we create a paragraph with multiple styled sections of text:

Paragraph fancy = new Paragraph();

Chunk bold = new Chunk("This ");

bold.Font.SetStyle(Font.BOLD);

fancy.Add(bold);

Chunk italics = new Chunk("is a");

italics.Font.SetStyle(Font.ITALIC);

fancy.Add(italics);

Chunk big = new Chunk("fancy");

big.Font.Size = 20;

big.Font.SetStyle(Font.BOLD);

fancy.Add(big);

Chunk struck = new Chunk("paragraph.");

struck.Font.SetStyle(Font.STRIKETHRU);

fancy.Add(struck);

A paragraph will automatically have some spacing, but it's possible to add more:

Paragraph spaced =

 new Paragraph("This has a lot of space around it.");

spaced.SpacingBefore = 72;

spaced.SpacingAfter = 72;

spaced.IndentationLeft = 72;

spaced.IndentationRight = 72;

Indenting the paragraph by setting the IndentationLeft property indents the entire paragraph, though. Often, you'll want to indent only the first line of a paragraph. This can be done by setting the FirstLineIndent property:

Paragraph p = new Paragraph();

p.FirstLineIndent = 36;

While paragraphs are left-aligned by default, the alignment can be changed using the Alignment property:

Paragraph p = new Paragraph();

p.Alignment = Element.ALIGN_LEFT;

p.Alignment = Element.ALIGN_CENTER;

p.Alignment = Element.ALIGN_RIGHT;

p.Alignment = Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED;

The lines in a paragraph will naturally need some space between them, called a leading. The default leading will often do fine, but sometimes the leading must be modified. This can be done by setting the Leading property:

Paragraph spacy = new Paragraph();

spacy.Leading = 72;

The leading can also be specified in the constructor:

Paragraph spacy2 = new Paragraph(72);

Paragraph spacy3 = new Paragraph(72,

 "The leading is an inch.");

The leading can also be calculated by multiplying the font size by a number. This feature can be used, for example, to double space a paragraph:

Paragraph doubleSpaced = new Paragraph();

doubleSpaced.MultipliedLeading = 2;

Next: A short example >>
 

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