Converting text to symbol

Aspose.PDF Product Family
1

We hope to use ASPOSE.Word, .PDF and .PDF Kit to process Word Mail Merge documents and generate PDF-format reports. One issue we need to resolve is the need to convert a simple ASCII text string from the Mail Merge data source file to a 'checkmark' symbol (most likely, from the Wingdings font) in the final PDF document.

In the Mail Merge data source file, any text that needs to be converted to a checkmark character will be represented by a standard text string, such as '[ck]'. My question is whether ASPOSE.PDF or ASPOSE.PDF Kit provide the tools we will need to make this conversion.

Thanks.

This message was posted using Page2Forum from Getting Started - Aspose.Pdf for .NET and Java
2

Hi,

Thank you for considering Aspose.

I think you can replace the string in Aspose.Words but I am not sure. I will ask the Aspose.Words team to check this issue.

3

Thanks for looking into this. If I understand the process right, in converting a Word Mail Merge document to a final PDF, an interim XML file built from the Word document is fed to ASPOSE.PDF. Would we have access to the XML file, and could we do the substuitution there? Thanks.

Bill S.

4

Dear Bill,

Yes it is possible to access the XML and do the substuitution. You can try it. If you don't know how to write the xml for the symbol, you can write a symbol in Word and get the XML through Aspose.Words. I just wonder if there is easy solution that do the substuitution in Aspose.Words.

5

Hello Bill,

Please refer to the following article for your requirement. Insert Check Boxes During Mail Merge

6

Thanks. We had already set up a document with just a coup;le of checkmark characters in it, so we could see the xml strings. One of your other techs referred me to an article that showed how to do some substitution. We'll try that first to see if we can adapt it for our situation.

Bill

7

Thanks. We’ll take a look at the article and see if we can adapt the code for inserting checkmarks into the document.

8

Hello!<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Thank you for your inquiry.

I’m Viktor, the developer on Aspose.Words Team responsible for integration with Aspose.Pdf. My colleagues asked me to take a look at this thread.

As I see from the discussion you are going to substitute strings like '[ck]' with real check marks. Check mark can be represented by character with code 0xF054 (hexadecimal) of Wingdings 2 font. This is the way how we simulate check marks when exporting to PDF. So substitution should be considered in two steps: replacing text and changing font. First task wouldn’t be a problem alone. But for the second you also need to split runs in a paragraph at the boundaries of substitution. For instance, you have a paragraph with homogenous formatting:

Select this check mark [ck] to enable caching.

Most probably it consists of only one run. But you will clone it producing three runs, modify text and change font in the middle run. Then insert clones to the paragraph in proper order.

There could be considered easier way. You can perform ordinary replacement. After it newly placed text will be put in separate runs and you can just change their font. But character 0xF054 can accidentally occur in the document and will be involved in the process. I would prefer more reliable solution.

Please let me know if this helps.

Regards,