I am happy to inform you that I have just published a new version of Ab2d.ReaderSvg.

This version brings the following new features and improvements:

• Added support for using polygon as clip-path.
• Improved transforming shapes and brushes.
• Prevented applying opacity twice - to alpha value in color and to Opacity property on element.
• Added support for "fill-opacity" and "stroke-opacity" attributes.
• Fixed ResourceDictionaryWriter so that the ResolveResourceKeyCallback is called also for root keys.
• Used black as default fill color (when fill is not specified).
• Prevented stretching geometry under some circumstances when svg file was read as geometry.

I am happy to announce that the best svg reader for .Net has been improved.

I am also happy that I have not received any svg file that would not be read correctly for very long time. This means that the reader very accurately converts the files to WPF object. So this part of the ReaderSvg did not get any upgrade.

The improvements in this update are focused on what you can do when you have the svg file in WPF objects tree. 

The main new improvement is better support for creating ResourceDictionaries from multiple svg files. ResourceDictionaries can be created with using ResourceDictionaryWriter application. The application is available with full source code and therefore it can be fully customized. The following is a screenshot of the new version of the application:

That screenshot was created after we have added two svg files for ResourceDictionary – one was home6.svg and the second was birthday_cake.svg. This can be seen from the left panel where images of both read files are seen. On the right side you can see the ResourceDictionary XAML.

As you see the SolidColorBrushes and Pens have been also specified as resources. This means that you can simple change the brush or pen with changing the resource value.

With the new version of ResourceDictionaryWriter application it is possible to specify when the SolidColorBrushe or Pen are written to resources and when they are defined as attributed for the elements. The screenshot shows an option that specifies that SolidColorBrushes and Pens are written to resources when they are used 2 times or more. So for example in the pre-last line of the XAML you can see that the GeometryDrawing is using a White brush. Because this brush is still defined as attribute, this means that this brush is used only once. If it would be used 2 times, it would be specified as resource. The application allows you to specify to always use resource, to never use resources and also allows you to specify a few options in between (with changing the source code you can use any possible option).

An improvement of the new version is that when importing objects as Shapes it is also possible to write Brushes are resources (before this was possible only for Geometries).

It is also possible to specify whether the objects will be written as Shapes (Canvas, Path, Rectangle, Ellipse, etc.) or as Geometry objects (as shown in the screenshot). Advantage of Shapes is that they are simpler to use and manipulate. The Geometry objects on the other hand are much lower lever objects and are harder to manipulate but have better performance and use less memory.

ResourceDictionaries are a very useful concept in WPF and I hope that with the improvements in this version it will be easier to create them.

Another improvement of the new version is with using RenderToBitmap method. Now it is possible to also specify custom dpi settings for the created bitmap. I have also fixed an issue where all objects were scaled to the border of the image the svg file was read with AutoSize set to false and we specified a custom sized bitmap.

After adding dpi support to RenderToBitmap method I have also improved SvgToPngConverter (sample console application) and added dpi and some other settings to it.

Also the main ReaderSvg samples have been improved. They now use custom control (TextBlockEx) to show information about each section of samples. The TextBlockEx allows you to very quickly define the text with new lines, bold regions, bullets and some other special formatting (for example hyperlinks). It replaced the clumsy DocumentViewer that require a lot of XAML for simple text and also produces annoying handled exceptions. Also the Frame element was replaced by custom DynamicContentControl that can be bind to UserControl type name to show the correct UserControl. Both new classes are part of the sample and can be freely used for your projects also.

In the following days I will also update the ResourceDictionaryWriter that comes with ReaderWmf library. It will provide similar improvements as the one that comes with ReaderSvg.

I hope you are satisfied with improvements. As always, if you find a svg file that is not correctly read, please send it to me. Also if you are missing a special functionality and think that it could be also beneficial to others, please let know and maybe I will implement it for you – usually after a day or two you can already get a pre-released version with new functionality.

I am happy to announce that maintenance releases are now available for Ab2d.ReaderWmf and Ab2d.ReaderSvg.

The improvements and fixes in Ab2d.ReaderWmf are:

• Improved scaling of text. Before sometimes the text was not correctly scaled - for example when pasting cells from excel the text can go out of bounds. The text is scaled with RenderTransform on TextBlocks. Note that scaling can be turned off with setting ProcessCharacterSpacing property to false.
• Added support for text that is defined by glyphs indexes instead of unicode characters (usually when the metafile was created from the data that was sent to printer).
• Fixed processing character spacing for special charter marks that are shown over another character like carets, etc.
• Fixed exporting to XAML when the content of the Text property contains curly brackets. Before parser wanted to use them for binding expression.
• Added ResolveRasterOperation delegate that enables using custom brush when an unsupported raster operation is used in metafile.

The following are the changes in Ab2d.ReaderSvg:

• Fixed exporting to XAML when the content of Text property contains curly brackets. Before parser wanted to use them for binding expression.
• Prevented throwing ArgumentException when right or bottom value in object's bounds was negative.

As usual the new version can be downloaded from User Account page (for commercial users) or from my Downloads page (for evaluation version).

I am happy to announce that the new version of Ab2d.ReaderSvg library is available.

The version adds improved support for svg use and embedded svg elements. Those two svg elements are now correctly placed and have the correct size.

The new version also provides two new properties that can be used to fix problems that are caused by the differences between WPF and svg.

The first new property is SwitchElementProcessingType. It specifies which children of the svg switch element will be imported and shown. The switch element in svg file defines children that are shown based on the conditions defined in switch element. Because it is not possible to process svg conditions in WPF, it is possible to choose how the children will be imported and which children will be shown. The possible values for SwitchElementProcessingType are:

• Disabled - svg switch element will not be imported.
• ShowFirstDiscardOthers - only the first switch child will be imported. Other children will not be imported.
• ShowFirstHideOthers - all switch children will be imported. Only the first element will be shown. Other children will have their Visibility set to Hidden.
• ShowFirstCollapseOthers (default) - all switch children will be imported. Only the first element will be shown. Other children will have their Visibility set to Collapsed.
• ShowAll - all switch children will be imported and shown.

The second new property is OverrideMiterLimit. The property has been added because WPF renders miter limit line cab differently as they are defined in svg specifications. The miter lime cabs show sharp line edges. But when the two lines meet at low angle, the sharp edge could extend very far away from the line junction. Therefore the miter limit can limit the sharp edges. In WPF the miter limit is used to specify how far away the sharp edge is allowed to go. In svg, the miter limit defined at which angle the miter limit is converted into beveled edge. This difference can lead to some anomalies when importing svg files. In this case the OverrideMiterLimit can be used to override the miter limit specified in the svg file and use value 1 or 2 instead.

For more information about the differences please see forum thread about this.

For backwards compatibility by default the miter limit defined in svg file is used (OverrideMiterLimit = 0).

Both new properties can be also set in the new ViewerSvg (here the default OverrideMiterLimit is set to 2 - miter limit of 2 is used by default).

The best svg reader for WPF and svg to xaml converter for WPF and Silverlight is now even better.

This release focuses mostly on making work with Ab2d.ReaderSvg easier. Now it is possible to get progress report when reading svg files (there are also two interesting samples about this). It is now easier to use GetXaml method when the read svg file has embedded images. Also the ResourceDictionaryWriter class (helper class to create ResourceDictionaries from svg files) is now greatly improved. With new protected fields and protected virtual methods it is now very customizable.

The reading engine also has some improvements. It fixes some of the special issues that were reported by error reporting in ViewerSvg. The number or error reports is now very low and this tells that the reading engine is already very good and can handle really most of svg files.

The problems with showing the exported xaml in Visual Studio 2010 designer for Silverlight are now gone. With the new version the GetXaml method sets Width and Height to Path element when it is called to create xaml for Silverlight. This is a workaround for a bug in Visual Studio - please vote for the bug on Microsoft Connect so it will be fixed as soon as possible.

The samples have also been updated. There are now a few more samples and they are now available for both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010.

The following is a list of all changes in Ab2d.ReaderSvg:

• Added ProgressChanged event to ReaderSvg to get report progress when reading file.
• Improved GetXaml method for Silverlight: Added workaround for displaying Paths in Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010 designer - set Width and Height to Path element.
• Improved GetXaml method - now the images are written to xaml without need to specify ResolveImagePath delegate. The uri format can be specified with the new DefaultImageUriFormatString property in XamlWritterSettings.
• Improved reading linked images (not embedded into svg file). Before an exception was thrown when the image file could not be located - now the image object is created but its Source is not set.
• Fixed reading some svg files with embedded image that reported "Invalid length for a Base-64 char array." error (used custom base64 reader instead of .Net method to read the string).
• Fixed problems with reading svg files from Microsoft Visio that have more than one layer with the same name defined.
• Improved ResourceDictionaryWriter class to make it much more customizable. The AddFile and AddStream methods now work correctly. The usedSvgReader, geometrySettings and xamlWritterSettings fields are now protected so they can be changed in derived class. Also the methods CreateReaderSvg, CreateXamlWriterSettings, ReadSvgFile, ReadSvgStream, GetXaml, GetRootResourceKey and ResolveResourceKeyCallback are now protected and virtual so they can be overriden in derived class.
• Added AddHiddenElements property that specifies if hidden elements are read. If the value of AddHiddenElements is true, than hidden elements are read and have their Visibility property set to Hidden or Collapsed (depends on using display or visibility attribute in svg file).

As always the ViewerSvg application has also been improved.

As with Paste2Xaml the ViewerSvg can now also change the size of read elements to any custom size. This is not done with only adding a ScaleTransform to the root element (as in previous versions) but now the positions, sizes and other values are changed to fit into the new size.

The improvements in Ab2d.ReaderSvg are also reflected in ViewerSvg. There is now an option to read or skip reading hidden elements. The export dialog also has some new settings - see the following is a screenshot:

As usual the new version can be downloaded from User Account page (for commercial users) or from my Downloads page (for evaluation version).

The biggest improvement of the new version of ReaderSvg is improved performance.

To prepare the new version a lot of time was spent in a profiler. I used some very complex files from some common applications that can save drawings into svg file.

It was quickly clear that the most of the CPU cycles were spend to solve svg's style inheritance. A lot of the time was also used to resolve many possibilities to define styles in svg file (svg styles, css, attributes, ect.).

For example if we have a complex hierarchy, the root group element can define stroke thickness for the path element that is 10 children away. The process of getting the correct style declarations was before not optimal and is now much faster.

The SVG Specification allows some very complex stlye declararions that are very rarely used. The code that tries to support all the possibilities is much quite complex and takes significant time to execute. I have analyzed the svg files I have (really a lot of them - lots of them from users feedback) and found out that almost all of them are using only simple style declarations. So I have decided that by default only simple style declarations would be processed. But if needed the complex style processing can be used by setting the new OptimizeStyleProcessing property on ReaderSvg to false.

For example the following style declaration is by default not processed correctly (but magically it is read correctly with setting OptimizeStyleProcessing to false):

<defs>
   <style type="text/css"><![CDATA[
            .mummy circle, .mummy rect, .mummy polygon { fill: green}
            .mummy > .thischild { fill: red }
            .primus + .secundus { fill: red }
            .mummy circle:first-child { fill: red}
         ]]></style>
</defs>

Improved performance is not the only improvement. There is more:

• Added support for text and tspan baseline-shift.

• Now polyline and polygon are read as WPF's Polyline and Polygon elements (in previous version they were read as Path).

• Fixed measuring size - improved for bigger stroke thickness on some shapes (when AutoSize property on ReaderSvg is true - by default).

• Fixed SvgViewbox and SvgDrawing controls - they do not throw exceptions when Source is not set but some other property like AutoSize is set.

As usual the existing customers can download the new version from their User Account page. Others can download a 60-days trial version from my Downloads page.

I am really excited to announce that the long awaited new version of ReaderSvg has been released.

The new version 3.0 is full of great new features and improvements. The most important is the support for Drawing objects (objects that derive from Geometry class - DrawingGeometry, StreamGeometry, etc.)

Previous versions of Ab2d.ReaderSvg returned the read svg files as Shapes (Path, Polyline, Ellipse, etc.). This was great when you needed to manipulate separate objects or add some mouse events to objects. The flexibility of Shapes has its cost when complex objects are shown - the performance could be very poor and memory consumption very high. WPF provides a much more efficient way to show more complex images - by using Drawing objects instead of Shapes.

With the new Ab2d.ReaderSvg it is possible to read the objects as Shapes (with the Read method) or as Drawings (with the new ReadGeometry method). And what is more, it is also possible to further optimize the drawing by using resources for similar Pens and Brushes and by combining geometries together (with passing the GeometrySettings to ReadGeometry method).

To make the usage of read svg objects simpler, there is also a ResourceDictionaryWriter sample applications that can produce complex ResourceDictionaries from svg files with just a few mouse clicks. The following screenshot shows SVG ResourceDictionaryWriter application with three svg files added to the ResourceDictionary (xaml of ResourceDictionary can be seen on the right):

The support for Drawing objects is just one of the improvements of the new version. Another very big improvement is much better performance of ReaderSvg - now reading svg files is almost as fast as parsing xaml with XamlReader.

Here is the full list of changes:

• Added Drawing objects support:
  new ReadGeometry method with support for advanced geometry optimization and use of resources (Burshes and Pens are defined in resources).
  new ResourceDictionaryWriter class and sample SampleResourceDictionary aplication to simplify creating resources from the svg files
• Added SvgDrawing control to show svg file as geometries in xaml
• Greatly improved performance on svg files where path elements have a lot of segments.
• Added GetXaml method to get the xaml of the read objects (also used in ViewerSvg; it is much more accurate as System.Windows.Markup.XamlWriter.Save)
• Added GetObjectName method - gets the name of the object. If object does not have a name defined returns null
• Optimized the output xaml for Path element - now the properties with default values are no longer displayed. This in most cases removes the following properties: StrokeStartLineCap, StrokeEndLineCap, StrokeDashCap, StrokeLineJoin, StrokeMiterLimit, StrokeDashOffset
• Added support for gradientTransform on radialGradient
• Added support for known colors in xaml writter - known colors like Black, Yellow can now be written with its name instead of hex display (#FF000000). This feature is used by default but can be disabled with setting UseColorNames in XamlWriterSettings to false.
• Fixed propagating text styles to child tspan elements (for example if text has underline decoration set, underline will be used also on the child tspan elements - if not overwritten by different text-decoraton)
• The path is now automatically closed when the last segment ends on the same position as the start segment. Before if the paths were not manually closed, there could be some sharp edges on some parts of the path.
• Improved setting the size of returned Viewbox.
  If AutoSize is false the returned Viewbox has the size that is defined in the svg file. The previous version did not set the size correctly.
  If the svg width and height are specified in cm, mm or inches the output size in xaml is set in cm.
• Added AutoSize property to SvgViewbox and SvgDrawing
• Added support for bitmap patterns - used as background textures
• Added BitmapImages property that contains all the bitmaps read with ReaderSvg (also contains images embedded into the svg file)
• Added ReadPathAsPathGeometry property - If false (default) the path is read as StreamGeometry (better performance). If true the path is read as PathGeometry (worse performance but path can be modified).

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Because of so many changes, it is possible that some of the applications that are using Ab2d.ReaderSvg need to be changed. Please consider the following two issues:

NamedObject dictionarty is changed from Dictionary<string, FrameworkElement> to Dictionary<string, object>. This change was added so the NamedObject property can be also used when svg file was read as Geometry. ReadGeometry method returns objects that are not derived from FrameworkElement. So the type change was needed. It would be also possible to define a new dictionary, but this would only postpone the change - in the future all the readers would implement the same interface and there will be room for only one named objects dictionary. This change could mean that the code that is using the NamedObject must be changed. If only the Read method is used (and not ReadGeometry), than the following code can be used:
FrameworkElement element = myReaderSvg.NamedObject["myObject"] as FrameworkElement;

Another change is that by default all paths are now read as StreamGeometry (before they were read as PathGeometry). This greatly improves the performance of reading svg file and drawing objects in WPF. But if your code expects the PathGeometry, the default behavior would throw a runtime exception. To avoid this, you can change your code to support StreamGeometry or set the new ReadPathAsPathGeometry property on ReaderSvg to true.

The ViewerSvg application has also been updated to support the new features of ReaderSvg. The following screenshot shows the new export dialog (notice the new geometries and new export images options):

The new version can be downloaded from my Downloads page.
After downloading just install the new version over the previous version (no need to uninstall).