[GizmoC]

Hello

I am looking to create a Rich Text form that supports text input in various colors, styles (bold, italic, etc), and sizes.
Currently, I have it such that the user enters his message normally and each time he changes a style a particular "marker tag" will be placed before that word. After the user is done typing he then hits "Preview", and only in the Preview screen the whole text will be rendered manually in the Canvas.

For example, let's say I have entered the sentence "My house is big. My heart is small". If I make the second sentence bold and the word "house" pink color... then the sentence will look something like this:
"My *phouse is big. ^bMy heart is small."
This is what I mean by custom marker tags... but this solution seems a bit clunky because these markers tags are clearly visible to the user, and removing them can cause unforseen parsing errors while I try to "Preview".

So... does a better solution exist? Or even better, an API for this? What I am looking for is to create a stripped down Rich Text editor (similar to desktop versions) where any style changes can be seen immediately.