Hi,
Thanks for your answer, but I found a solution long back. The suggestion about the Addin was the first that I considered before posting it here, but that does not suit our problem.
Let me explain the scenario:
We are re-designing an application for Medical Transcription
In the old application we have an HTML editor, which solves the purpose of widely used rich text format. But over the last 3 years the situation has changed and most clients/doctors require a Word document to be sent to them. The overall original project handles all MIS related things and is very much automated. But due to this increasing requirement, the MT deparment is spending more time in maitaining documents in Word as well as HTML doc (which are required by our system), therefore reducing the overall efficiency.
(There already exist solutions of converting HTML to Word without loss, but that does not benefit the transcriptionist)
Some of our clients still require the old HTML system, as it has proved to be really userfriendly for the doctors (endusers). I would say that it is much easier to use than a word document.
We have a Windows forms .NET application, where we divided the main form into 3 areas. 2 areas have texbox, dropdown, etc controls of normal windows forms. The third area is called Transcribe Area.
The MTs would feel a drastic change if Word is given to them instead of the original application. Also its cannot be switched to as we have to use the old application also (I know Word can be converted to HTML, but that is not at all feasible)
Coming to the solution: We have put the Word window itself in the transcribe area...as a child window, hiding the Titlebar and some of the other border areas. It does look like Word integrated into .NET forms (actually its not). This is based on one of the articles at the code-project. (Dont have a link right now). We gave some more enhancements to it by disabing some menus and options esp the New/Open/Close buttons, which makes it more like a control.
Though we are facing problems in it. Say an Alt+F4 will close the word doc (we have disabled all the menu options that do this, but donot know how to disable this shortcut). Also in our application we have keys F1-F8 associated with our application shortcuts and MTs are very much used to those. Say in the word window if someone presses f1, the word help would be opened, where it means something else in our application. There is a technique to capture the events sent to the Word window, but no method in my knowledge to capture those events and prevent those events from going to the Word Window.
Also one strange problem occurs in some machines: The Word's New/Open command bar buttons remain disabled even if it is opened from the start menu.
Temporarily we are planning to give them a "restore document" option, in case somthing goes wrong.
Whatever best solution we get, we are going to post an article at CodeProject whenever that is completed (thats where it came from). Till then happy searching.
If you can help us in any of the above stated problems, please do let me know.
Thanks,
Anup Shinde.
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