Templates

A document is a Template containing one or more Sections. Each Section has three areas — Header, Pane, Footer — plus a Margin, optional DefaultFont, and an optional Name.

Template

var section = new Section();
section.Pane.ElementList.Add(new Text { Value = "Hello" });

var template = new Template(section);

For multi-section documents, build the Template with the first section and add more via SectionList:

var first  = new Section();
var second = new Section();

var template = new Template(first);
template.SectionList.Add(second);

Each section in the list renders as one logical block — usually one page, but elements like TextBox and Table can grow across pages.

Section areas

A Section is laid out top-to-bottom:

+--------------------------------+
|         Header                 |  Height controlled by section.Header.Height
+--------------------------------+
|                                |
|         Pane                   |  Fills the remaining space
|                                |
+--------------------------------+
|         Footer                 |  Height controlled by section.Footer.Height
+--------------------------------+

Each area is an ElementList you push visual elements onto:

section.Header.Height = "2cm";
section.Header.ElementList.Add(new Text { Value = "Statement of Account" });

section.Pane.ElementList.Add(new TextBox
{
    Value = "Body text that wraps across lines and pages.",
    Width = "100%"
});

section.Footer.Height = "1cm";
section.Footer.ElementList.Add(new Text { Value = "Page {Page} of {TotalPages}" });

Margins

Section.Margin is a UnitRectangle. The default is zero on all sides:

section.Margin = new UnitRectangle
{
    Left   = "1cm",
    Top    = "2cm",
    Right  = "1cm",
    Bottom = "2cm",
};

Element coordinates (Left, Top, Right, Bottom, Width, Height) are measured inside the section's margins.

Units

Positions and sizes are strings parsed by UnitValue:

Suffix	Meaning
cm	centimetres
mm	millimetres
pt	points (1/72 inch)
in	inches
%	percentage of the parent area's width or height

So Left = "50%" means halfway across the parent area, and Width = "100%" fills it.

Default font

Set Section.DefaultFont to provide a fallback for all text elements in that section:

section.DefaultFont = new Font
{
    Name = "Arial",
    Size = "12pt",
    Color = Color.Black
};

Individual elements can override by setting their own Font property.

Naming sections

Set Section.Name if you want to reference a specific section in DocumentData table mappings or downstream tooling. The name is preserved in the XML serialization (Template.ToXml() / Template.Load(xml)).

XML round-trip

Templates can be persisted as XML:

XmlDocument xml = template.ToXml();
// ... persist xml ...

Template loaded = Template.Load(xml);

This is useful when the template is authored by a designer separately from the C# call site, or when templates ship as resources alongside the data that fills them.

Next

• Elements — the visual primitives you place inside Header.ElementList, Pane.ElementList, and Footer.ElementList.
• Data and rendering — feeding DocumentData into the renderer.