Import external RTF file for TRichEditViewer?

Question

I'm using TRichEditViewer on a custom page in an Inno Setup script. Is it possible to read an external RTF file into a variable, and use that variable as the content of the viewer? Or do I have to keep the actual RTF code in the script?

Any help gratefully received.

Your follow-up question: [LoadStringFromFile into compiled script (so available on system that doesn't have the file)?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/26315825/850848) — Martin Prikryl, Nov 01 '17 at 10:35

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

You should be able to use LoadStringFromFile to read an RTF file into a string. From the Inno documentation:

Prototype:

function LoadStringFromFile(const FileName: String; var S: AnsiString): Boolean;

Description:

Loads the specified binary or non Unicode text file into the specified string. Returns True if successful, False otherwise.

You should be able to define a string type variable for ANSI Inno Setup or AnsiString type variable for Unicode Inno Setup using something like:

var
#ifndef UNICODE
  rtfstr: string;
#else
  rtfstr: AnsiString;
#endif

Then in the code:

LoadStringFromFile('filenamehere.rtf', rtfstr);

And then use code similar to what is below. In this example assume oRichViewer is a TRichEditViewer object:

oRichViewer.UseRichEdit := True;
oRichViewer.RTFText := rtfstr;

This should have the effect of putting rtfstr which we loaded from the file earlier into the TRichEditViewer .

Beautifully clear, and does exactly what I asked for. Thank you! — emendelson, Oct 06 '14 at 12:36

Eugene Mala · Answer 2 · 2017-11-01T15:49:16.303

If you don't want to copy your .rtf file to the temporary folder before displaying it, and want to fill variable with RTF content at compile time - you can use Inno Setup Preprocessor.

First, create a macros ReadFileAsStr:

#pragma parseroption -p- 

#define FileHandle
#define FileLine
#define FileName
#define Result
#sub ProcessFileLine
  #define FileLine = FileRead(FileHandle) 
  #if Len(Result) > 0 && !FileEof(FileHandle)
    #expr Result = Result + "#10#13 +  \n"
  #endif
  #if FileLine != '\0'
    #expr Result = Result + "'" + FileLine + "'"
  #endif
#endsub
#sub ProcessFile
  #for {FileHandle = FileOpen(FileName); \
    FileHandle && !FileEof(FileHandle); ""} \
    ProcessFileLine
  #if FileHandle
    #expr FileClose(FileHandle)
  #endif   
#endsub

#define ReadFileAsStr(str AFileName) \
  Result = '', FileName = AFileName, ProcessFile, Result

And use it:

var
  rtfstr := {#emit ReadFileAsStr("path_to.rtf")};

This works for most RTF files, but some characters inside RTF can broke this code. To fix this you need to escape ' and may be some other characters inside ProcessFileLine sub.

Maybe you should start the answer by explaining that it really does not do, what OP has asked for, and why you chose this solution. — Martin Prikryl, Nov 01 '17 at 10:34
I think my answer do exactly what OP had asked for. And this is the alternative solution. I added more explanations to my answer. — Eugene Mala, Nov 01 '17 at 15:54

Import external RTF file for TRichEditViewer?

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